•CHm  !U 


VICTOR  HUGO. 


VICTOR    HUGO 


AND 


HIS    TIME 


BY    ALFRED    BARBOU 


ILLUSTRATED  WITH  120  DRAWINGS 

»v 

MM.  EMILE   BAYARD,  CLERGET,   FICHEL,  JULES  GARNIER,  GERYEX,  GIACOMELLI 

CH.  GOSSELIN,  JEAN-PAUL  LAURENS,  LIX,  OLIVIER  MERSON,  H.  MEYER 

ED.    MORIX,  SCOTT,  VOGEL.  ZIER,  ETC. 

AND 

A  GREAT  NUMBER  OF  DRAWINGS  BY  VICTOR  HUGO 

ENGRAVED  BY  MEAULLE 


TRANSLATED    FROM  THE  FRENCH  BY 
ELLEN   E.  FREWER 


NEW     YORK 
HARPER    &    BROTHERS,    FRANKLIN    SQUARE 

1882 


SRLf 
URt 

3^*5 


«* 


//"'• ' 


1. 


CONTENTS. 


INTRODUCTION Page   xix 

CHAPTER  I. 

Genealogy.— Family  Arms.— Bishop  of  Ptolemaide.— Count  Leopold  Sigisbert  Hugo,  Father  of  Victor.— His 
Mother.— Maternal  Descent.— Sponsors.— Certificate  of  Birth— Signification  of  Name.— Verses  in  "  Lea 
Feuilles  d'Automue." — Opinion  of  the  Bisontins. — Besanpou  never  Visited  by  Victor  Hugo 23 


CHAPTER  II. 

Infancy.— From  Besancon  to  Marseilles — From  Marseilles  to  Elba.— First  Stay  in  Paris.— The  House  in  the 
Rue  de  Clicby. — The  Well  in  the  Court-yard.— Departure  for  Italy. — Reminiscences  of  the  Journey — 
Early  Impressions.— Victor  Hugo's  Own  Account  of  Youthful  Travels. — The  Marble  Palace  of  Avellino. 
— Colonel  Hugo  in  Spain  with  Joseph  Bonaparte.—  Return  of  the  Family  to  Paris 29 


CHAPTER  III. 

The  House  in  the  Impasse  des  Feuillantines.— The  Garden. — Victor  Hugo's  Own  Reminiscences. — Maternal 
Instruction. — Portrait  of  Madame  Hugo. — Obedience  Enforced  upon  the  Children.— The  School  and  the 
Cul-de-sac. — General  Lahorie. — His  Commentary  on  Tacitus — His  Arrest  and  Execution. — Departure  for 
Spain 32 


CHAPTER  IV. 

From  Paris  to  Bayoiine. — A  Childish  Attachment. — From  Bayonne  to  Madrid. — The  Treasure  and  its  Con- 
voy.— Arrival  in  Madrid. — Residence  in  the  Masserano  Palace.  —  The  College  of  Nobles. — Schoolboy 
Fights. — Return  to  the  Feuillantines. — Lariviere's  Teaching. — Dangers  of  Clerical  Education. — A  Head- 
master "  Bald  and  Black."— Pepita,  the  Little  Spanish  Girl 38 


CHAPTER  V. 

The  Rue  da  Cherche-Midi.— The  Retreat  from  Spain.— General  Hugo's  Part  therein — Defence  of  Thionville. 
— The  Invasion. — Return  of  the  Bourbons. — A  King  instead  of  an  Emperor.— Free  Studies. — Madame 
Hugo  a  Royalist.— Domestic  Differences.— The  Pension  Cordier.— Schoolboy  Tyrants.— Leon  Gatayes 
and  the  King  of  the  "  Dogs."— A  Romantic  Mathematician.— Poetical  Essays.— Theatrical  Performances. 
— Juvenile  Effusions. 44 


CHAPTER  VI. 

A  Pamphleteer  at  Thirteen. — First  Connection  with  the  Academic  Franpaise.— "  L'enfant  sublime." — Cha- 
teaubriand or  Sonmet  the  Author  of  the  Mot.—  A  Romance  Written  in  a  Fortnight.— "  Bug-Jargal."- 
Studies  for  Future  Works.— Revision  and  Publication.— Subject  of  Play  Performed  1SSO 49 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  VII. 

The  Jeux  Floranx  at  Toulouse.— "Le*  Vierges  de  Verdnn."— Filial  Affection.— Letter  from  M.  Soumet— 
Reluctance  to  Go  to  the  Ecole  Polyteclinique.  — Allowance  Withdrawn. — Numerous  Changes  of  Resi- 
dence.—Publication  of  Odes.— Le  Contervateur  Lilteraire.— Description  of  the  Magazine. — Victor  Hugo  a 

Critic.— His  Articles  and  Kom»  de  plume Opinion  of  Lamartine's  First  "Meditations  Po6tiqnes."- 

First  Interview  of  the  Two  Poet? Page  65 

CHAPTER  VIII. 

The  Pamphlets  of  1819.— A  Cruel  Separation.  —  Publication  of  the  First  Odes. —Hard  Work.  —  Mother's 
Death.— An  Affecting  Betrothal — Offer  of  Marriage.— Duel  with  a  Life-guardsman.— Poverty  Bravely 
Borne.  —  A  Young  Poet's  Budget.  —  Publication  of  the  "Odes  et  Ballades."  —  Their  Success. — The 
Author's  Ideas  on  Odes. — Corrections  of  Manuscript. —  Lodging  in  the  Rue  du  Dragon. — Account  of 
Royal  Pension 60 

CHAPTER  IX. 

The  Poet's  Marriage. — Illness  and  Death  of  Eugene  Hugo.— General  Hugo  in  Paris. — His  Influence  on  Vic- 
tor.—" Han  (1'Islande."— Scope  of  the  Work.— Its  Reception  by  the  Critics.— Charles  Nodier's  Approval. 

— Partisans  of  the  Book.— Drama  Founded  on  it.— Fortune  Smiles  on  the  Poet The  House  in  the  Rue 

de  Vauginml.  —  IAI  Revue  Franyaise. — Victor  Hugo's  Opinion  of  Voltaire  in  1824 — His  Observations 
on  Lamenuais,  Walter  Scott,  and  Byron. — Achille  Devcria  and  Louis  Boulanger 67 

(II AFTER  X. 

Journey  to  Blois.—  Victor  Hugo  Made  Chevalier  of  the  Legion  of  Honor . — Coronation  of  Charles  X. — Visit 
to  Lamartine. — Trip  Across  the  Alps. — Return  to  Paris. — Proclamation  of  Literary  Liberty. — Birth  of 
Romanticism.— Wrath  of  the  Classics.— Literature  of  the  First  Empire. — Revival  at  the  Beginning  of 
the  Present  Century.— Prelude  of  a  Great  War — Caricature  of  a  Classic.—"  L'Ode  a  la  Coloune  " 73 

CHAPTER  XI. 

Le  Ce'nacle.— Appearance  of  Saintc-Beuve. — M.  Taylor. — A  Conversation  with  Talma.—"  Cromwell." — Preface 
to  the  Work — Opposition  Provoked. — Analysis  by  the  Author — Various  Opinions. — Death  of  Madame 
Foucher.— Marriage  of  Abel  Hugo. — Death  of  General  Hugo. — "  Amy  Robsart" 7!> 

CHAPTER  XII. 

Conception  of  a  Great  Work.— Time  Occupied  in  Writing  "Marion  Delorme." — Reading  at  Deveria's  House. 
— Sensibility  of  Alexandra  Dumas. — Didier's  Forgiveness. — Anecdote  of  fimile  Deschamps.— Competition 
of  Theatrical  Managers. — Censorship  of  Charles  X.— A  Royal  Audience.— Prohibition  without  Appeal.— 
The  King  Offers  Compensation.— Refusal  of  the  Pension. — M.  Taylor's  Perplexity. — "Hernaui."— Report 
of  the  Censors. — Mile.  Mars  at  Rehearsal 87 

CHAPTER  XIII. 

First  Performance  of  "Hernani." — A  Petition  from  the  Classics. — Intrigues  of  the  Philistines. — Appearance 
of"  Young  France." — Theophile  Gautier's  Red  Waistcoat. — A  Quew  at  the  Theatre  Door. — Seven  Hours' 
Wait. — Scene  in  the  House.— Homage  to  Beauty. — The  Battle. — A  Blunder. — Down  with  Sycophants.— 
Mile. Mars's  Costume. — A  Child's  Question. — The  Triumph  of  Romanticism. — Parodies  of  "Hernani. "— 
The  Press  in  1830.— After  the  Victory <jf> 

CHAPTER  XIV. 

The  Revolution  of  July,  1S30.— Performance  of  "Marion  Delorme." — Reasons  for  Delay. — Reception  by  the 
Public. — Parodies. — Jules  Jamil's  Indignation.  —  "  Le  Roi  s'Amuse." — First  Performance. — A  Severe 
Critic.—  Immediate  Prohibition.— Causes  of  Prohibition. — Louis  Philippe's  Ministry. — Trial  before  the 
Board  of  Trade.— Disgraceful  Hostility  of  the  Newspapers.— The  Poet's  Reply.— "Lucrecc  Borgia."— Its 
Actors.—  Immense  Success.— A  Duel  Avoided 104 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  XV. 

"Marie  Tudor."— Mile.  Georges.  —  "Angelo."— Rivalry  between  Mile.  Mars  and  Madame  Dorval.  —  "La 
Esmeralda."  —  Fatality. —  "Ruy  Bias."  —  M.  Auguste  Vacquerie  at  the  First  Performance.  —  "Les  Bur- 
graves."— Victor  Hugo's  Determination.— Unpublished  Works.— Underhand  Dealings  of  Tragic  Writers. 
— M.  Ponsard's  "  Lucrece."— Love  on  the  Classic  Stage.— Literary  Types.— A  Successful  Lawsuit.  .Page  115 

CHAPTER  XVI. 

"Les  Orientales."  — A  Portrait  of  Victor  Hugo. —Respect  Inspired  by  the  Past.  — Changes  of  Residence — 
The  House  in  the  Rue  Jeau-Goujon— An  Attempt  at  Murder.— The  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes.—M..  Buloz.— 
M.  Xavier  Martnier. — Domestic  Life.  —  "Les  Feuilles  d'Automue."  —  Manuscripts.  —  " Les  Chants  du 
Cre'puscule." — "Les  Voix  Inte'rienres." — "Les  Rayons  et  les  Ombres" 121 

CHAPTER  XVII. 

"  Litteratnre  et  Philosophic  Melees."— Jacobite  in  1810,  Revolutionist  in  1830.— The  Poet's  Judgment  on 
his  Early  Works. — Study  of  Conscience. — Thoughts  upon  Art.— History  of  the  French  Language.— Can- 
didature for  the  Academic.  —  Failure  Thrice. —Malice  of  Casimir  Delavigne. —Wrath  of  Alexandra 
Duval. — Chateaubriand  and  Vieunet.— Formal  Reception — A  Satirical  Quatrain. — Speeches  of  the  New 
Member 131 

CHAPTER  XVIII. 

"Notre  Dame  de  Paris." — A  Shawl  and  a  Bottle  of  Ink. — Anther's  Aim  in  the  Work.  —  Archaeology  and 
Philosophy. — Criticism. — Opinions  of  Sainte-Beuve  and  Jules  Janin. — Victor  Hugo's  Erudition. — His 
Vocabulary.  —  Complaints  of  the  Savans. — A  Well-iuformed  Cicerone. — Plays  Adapted  from  "Notre 
Dame  de  Paris." — Contemplated  Romances — "  Le  Rhin." — A  Conscientious  Tourist. — Mediaeval  Archi- 
tecture   136 

CHAPTER  XIX. 

The  Place  Royale.— The  Poet's  Apartments. — Anguste  de  Chatillon. — Victor  Hugo's  Salon A  Legendary 

Dais. — Literary  Society — Introduction  to  Anguste  Vacquerie. — M.  Paul  Meurice. — Marriage  of  Charles 
Vacquerie  to  Le"opoldiue  Hugo.— Fatal  Accident  at  Villequier.— Madame  Victor  Hugo's  Picture. — The 

Poet's  Nocturnal  Strolls. — Assaulted  in  the  Rue  des  Toumelles 144 

v 

CHAPTER  XX. 

Victor  Hugo's  Politics  during  the  Reign  of  Louis  Philippe.  —  His  Convictions  in  1830. — Revolutionary  Sen- 
timents.—  Literary  Liberty  followed  by  Political  Liberty. — Connection  with  the  Press. — Relations  with 
the  King.— Portrait  of  Louis  Philippe. — Raised  to  the  Peerage. — First  Speeches  in  the  Chamber. — Prel- 
udes to  the  Revolution  of  1848 153 

CHAPTER  XXI. 

Elections  for  the  Constituent  Assembly. — Address  10  the  Electors. — Speeches  in  the  Assembly.— Socialist 

Opinions. — Opinion  on  the  Events  of  June Republican  Convictions. —Pardon  to  the  Vanquished.— 

Rescue  of  Insurgents.— Victor  Schcelcher.— Independent  Votes. — Publication  of  L' Evenement. — Prospectus 
of  the  Paper.— Dissolution  of  Constituent  Assembly.— The  Legislative  Assembly. — Bonaparte  President. 
— A  Trilogy  .—The  Coupd'Etat ICO 

CHAPTER  XXII. 

Acts  Leading  to  Banishment  —  A  Price  Set  upon  the  Poet's  Head — Drive  thronsrh  Paris.— A  Woman's 
Devotion — Sons  and  Friends  in  Prison — Arrival  in  Brussels. — "L'Histoire  d'un  Crime." — "Les  Homines 
de  1'Exil."— Proposition  to  the  Literary  Society  of  France. — La  Grande  Place  in  Brussels. — "Napoteon  le 
Petit" — Alarm  of  the  Belgian  Government— The  Exile's  Expulsion 167 


xii  CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  XXIII. 

Jersey.— Reception  of  the  Exiles.— Victor  Hugo's  Resource*. — Sale  of  Furniture.— Apartments  in  the  Rue 
de  La  Tour  d'Auvergne.— Vacqnerie's  Sketches.— Formalities  of  Society.— The  Privileges  of  n  French 
Peer.— An  Imperial  Spy Page  171 

CHAPTER  XXIV. 

"Lea  Chatiments."—  Editions  of  1853.— Their  Introduction  into  France.— Attitude  of  the  Exiles  in  Jersey. 
— Victor  Hugo's  Fuuerul  Orations.— Action  of  the  English  Government.—  Sir  Robert  Peel.— Ribeyrolles" 
Reply. — L'Homme.— Felix  Pyat's  Letter.— Meeting  at  St.  Hdlier — Threats. — Denunciation  of  the  Exiles. 
—Victor  Hugo's  Protest. — The  London  Press — The  Second  Expulsion 177 

CHAPTER   XXV. 

Departure  from  Jersey.— Satisfaction  of  the  Bonapartist  Journals.— "  Les  Contemplations."— Criticisms.— 
Opinion  of  the  Revue  ties  Deux  Monde*. — Reception  of  the  Work  in  France.—"  La  Legende  des  Si&cles." 
—Outline  of  its  Aim. — Correspondence  with  Charles  Baudelaire 186 

CHAPTER  XXVI. 

Guernsey.— Hanteville  House.— The  Oak  Gallery.— Garibaldi's  Chamber — The  Study.— Family  Pursuits 

Pets. — "Les  Mise'rables." — Lamartine  and  his  "Cours  de  Litterature."— Letter  from  Victor  Hugo.— 
Dinners  to  Poor  Children — Banquet  in  Brussels. — M.  Grenier's  Criticism 190 

CHAPTER  XXVII. 

Victor  Hugo  and  Capital  Punishment.— "Le  Dernier  Jour  d'nn  Coudamne."— "Claude  Gueux."— The  Verses 
that  Saved  Barbes'  Life.  -Louis  Philippe's  Recognition.— Speech  in  the  Constituent  Assembly.— Trial  of 
Charles  Hugo. — Defence  by  his  Father. — Protests  from  Jersey. — A  Letter  to  Lord  Palmerston. — John 
Brown  and  America.— Debate  of  the  Genevan  RepuWic.— "  Pour  un  Soldat" 203 

CHAPTER  XXVIII. 

The  People  of  Jersey  Atone  for  the  Past.— A  Marriage.— Births.— Tour  in  Zealand.— Incognito  of  No 
Avail. — From  Antwerp  to  Middelburg.— Dutch  Hospitality. — An  Ovation — Return  to  Belgium.—"  Les 
Chansons  des  Rues  et  des  Bois."— Victor  Hugo  a  Musician — "Les  Travailleurs  de  la  Mer." — "L'Homme 
qni  Rit " 211 

CHAPTER  XXIX. 

Victor  Hugo's  Admiration  of  Shakespeare.— The  Paris  Exhibition  of  1867.— "The  Paris  Guide."— The  Re- 
production of  "Heniaui."— "La  Voix  de  Guernesey."— Letter  to  the  Young  Poet*.—  Literary  Movement 
under  the  Second  Empire. — Le  Itappel.—Ita  Contributors. — A  Manifesto. — Summary  of  the  Works  of 
the  Exile 217 

CHAPTER  XXX. 

Return  to  France.— Distressing  Jonrney.— Popnlar  Ovation  on  Arrival. —The  Siege.— A  Cry  for  Peace.— 

A  Cry  for  War. — Public  Performances. — Proceeds  Purchasing  Cannon Strange  Diet.  —  Improvised 

Verges.— Walks  on  the  Ramparts.— Victor  Hugo's  Admiration  of  the  People  of  Paris. 224 

CHAPTER  XXXI. 

Elections  for  the  National  Assembly.  —  Arrival  at  Bordeaux — Garibaldi. —  Victor  Hugo's  Speech.  —  The 
Representatives  of  Alsace  and  Lorraine.— Stormy  Sittings. —Victor  Hugo's  Resignation.  —  Death  of 
Charles  Hugo.— His  Funeral. — The  Poet  in  Brussels.— Request  of  M.  Xavier  de  Montupiu 232 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER  XXXII. 

Victor  Hugo's  Opinion  of  the  Commune.—  The  Communists  in  Brussels.— The  Belgian  Chamber.— Attack 
upon  Victor  Hugo's  Quarters. — Expulsion  from  Belgium.— Protest  against  the  Action  of  the  Govern- 
ment.—A  Visit  to  Thiouville.  —  Reminiscences  of  General  Hugo. —Little  Georges  and  the  Prussian 
General.— Return  to  France Page  237 

CHAPTER  XXXIII. 

Votes  Obtained  in  July,  1811 The  Mandat  Imperatif  tcafi  \heMandat  Contractual.—  Election  of  January,  1872. 

— "  La  Liberation  du  Territoire."  -Death  of  Francois  Hugo.— His  Funeral.— Speech  by  Louis  Blanc.— 
Funeral  of  Madame  Louis  Blanc. — The  Poet's  Creed.—  "L'Anne'e  Terrible" 241 

CHAPTER  XXXIV. 

"Quatre-vingt-treize."— Criticism.— Article  by  M.  Escoffier.—  Victor  Hugo's  Good  Memory.— "  Mes  File."— 
"Actes  et  Paroles." — "Pour  un  Soldat."— Second  Series  of  "La  Legeude  des  Siecles."— The  Rue  de 
Clichy. — Receptions. — Conversation 246 

CHAPTER  XXXV. 

"L'Art  d'Stre  Grand-pere." --Georges  and  Jeanne. — Romps,  Tales,  and  Diversions.  —  "L'Histoire  d'un 
Crime  " 250 

CHAPTER  XXXVI. 

Victor  Hugo's  Creed. — Belief  in  the  Immortality  of  the  Soul. — Accusation  of  Being  an  Atheist. — "Le  Pape.'' 
— "Religions  et  Religion." — "La  Pitie  Supreme." — "L'Ane" 254 

CHAPTER  XXXVII. 

Revival  of  " Heruani."— Banquet  in  Celebration. — Revivals  of  "Ruy  Bias,"  "Notre  Dame  de  Paris,"  and 
"  Les  Miserables." — Saint- Victor  on  Victor  Hugo's  Vitality.— Banquet  at  the  Hotel  Continental,  February 
26, 1880.— Victor  Hugo's  Speech 258 

CHAPTER  XXXVIII. 

Victor  Hugo  as  a  Draughtsman.— His  First  Effort.— His  Subsequent  Progress.— His  Admiration  of  Albert 
Durer.— Album  Published  by  Castel — Letter  of  Victor  Hugo  to  Castel. — New-year's  Gifts. — Caricatures. 
—Victor  Hugo's  Handwriting. — M.  Jules  Claretie's  Observation. — Destination  of  Manuscripts 262 

CHAPTER  XXXIX. 

Retirement  from  Senatorial  Life. — Re-elected  in  1876.— Recent  Political  Sentiments. — Speech  at  Chateau 
d'Eau.— Conversation  at  Home. — Anticipations  for  the  Future 265 

CHAPTER  XL. 

Present  Residence  of  the  Poet— Domestic  Habits. — Economy  of  Time.— Fete  of  February  27, 1881.— Proces- 
sion of  Children. — Address  of  Corporations.— Speech  in  Reply. — Illumination  of  Theatres.— The  Poet's 
Continued  Work — Works  yet  to  Appear.— Conclusion 268 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS. 


PAGE 

VICTOR  HUGO Frontispiece. 

VICTOR  HUGO'S  BIRTHPLACE  AT  BESANCON    xviii 

BUST  OF  VICTOR  HUGO xxi 

LK  SIKCLK  DK  V.  HUGO 25 

GENERAL  HUGO,  VICTOR  H  UGO'S  FATHER 27 

THE  WELL  IN  THE  GARDEN 30 

THE  GARDEN  OF  THE  FEUILLANTINES 33 

GENERAL  LAHOKIE. 36 

THE  JOURNEY  TO  SPAIN 39 

YOUNG  PATRIOTS 40 

TUTOR  AND  PUPIL 41 

RECREATION 42 

THEATRICAL  PERFORMANCE  AT  THE  PENSION  DECOTTE 47 

"  THE  NONSENSE  THAT  I  WROTE  BEFORE  I  WAS  BORN  " . .  48 

CHATEAUBRIAND 51 

A  BLACK  FLAG  WAS  HOISTED  ON  THE  MOUNTAIN  ("  BUG-JARGAL") 53 

VICTOR  HUGO  AT  HIS  MOTHER'S  BEDSIDE 57 

LAMARTINE 59 

A  PROVOCATION 63 

THE  ROOM  IN  THE  RUE  DU  DRAGON 65 

HAN  D'ISLANDE 69 

CHARLES  NODIER 70 

ROMANTICISM 75 

CARICATURE  OF  A  CLASSIC 77 

OLIVER  CROMWELL 83 

AN  OLD  HOUSE  IN  BLOIS 85 

ALEXANDRE  DUMAS 88 

DIDIER  IN  "  MARION  DELORME  " , 89 

DONA  SOL  IN  "  HERNANI  " 93 

THEOPHILK  GAUTIER  IN  1860 97 

"  YOUNG  FRANCE  "  OUTSIDE  THE  THEATRE  FRANCAIS 99 

TRIBOULET  IN  "  LE  Roi  S'AMUSE  " 109 

MLLE.  GEORGES  AS  LUCRECE  BORGIA 112 

MLLE.  JULIETTE  AS  PRINCESS  NEGRONI 113 


xvi  LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS. 

PAOB 

«;<n  I  \  i  I:..MI:  \    IN   •'  Ki  \    Hi.  AS" 117 

SARA  LA  BAK.M  i  >i.  »••  LES  ORIENTALKS") 122 

VICTOR  HUGO  AT  TIIK  A<;K  <»••  TWENTY-EIGHT 123 

-  I.i  •-   l-'i-.i  n  i.i  ^   i.'Ai  IIIMM-  " 127 

••<;<>.\M   SorL,"  ETC 129 

LA  ES.MKHAI.DA 139 

NOTRK  DAME  DE  PARIS 141 

CASTI.K  ON  TIIK  RHINE. 143 

VICTOR  II coo's  HOUSE  IN  THE  PLACE  ROYALE 145 

TIIK  S.U.ON  IN  THE  PLACE  ROYALE 147 

CHARLES  VACQUERIE 148 

THE  ACCIDENT  AT  VILLEQUIER 150 

AN  ATTACK 151 

VICTOR  HUGO  AND  Louis  PHILIPPE. 157 

As  EPISODE  OF  THE  COUP  D'ETAT  ("  LES  CHATIMENTS  ") 165 

A  JERSEY  LANDSCAPE 171 

THE  EXILE 172 

VICTOR  HUGO'S  BEDROOM  AT  MARINE  TERRACE. 173 

THE  GREENHOUSE  AT  MARINE  TERRACE 174 

VICTOR  HUGO  AMIDST  THE  JERSEY  ROCKS 175 

"LES  CHATIMENTS ". 179 

MADAME  VICTOR  HUGO 182 

LJETITIA  RERUM 183 

THE  JERSEY  ROCKS 187 

JEANNIE  ("  LA  LE"GKNDE  DES  SIECLES  ") 188 

THE  CEDAR  ("  LA  LEGKNDE  DES  SIKCLES  ") 189 

THE  OAK  GALLERY  IN  HAUTEVILLE  HOUSE. 191 

VICTOR  HUGO'S  STUDY  AT  HAUTEVILLE  HOUSE 193 

JEAN  VALJEAN  ("  LES  MISE"RABLES  ") 195 

GAVROCHE  ("  LES  MISE"RABLES  ") 197 

THE  DINNER  TO  POOR  .CHILDREN 201 

FANTINE. , 202 

CHARLES  HUGO 205 

JOHN  BROWN 209 

AN  OVATION 213 

THE  EXILE'S  ROCK  IN  GUERNSEY 215 

"  L'HOMME  QUI   RlT  " 216 

PAUL  MEURICE. 220 

AUGUSTE  VACQUERIK. 221 

MADAME  PAUL  MEURICE. 227 

PERFORMANCE  AT  THE  THEATRE  FRANCAIS 231 

GARIBALDI % 233 

CHARLES  HUGO'S  FUNERAL. 234 

A  NIGHT  ATTACK  IN  BRUSSELS 239 

FRANCOIS  VICTOR  HUGO ...  242 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS.  xvii 


PAGE 


L'ANNE"E  TERRIBLE 245 

PETIT  PAUL  ("  LA  LE"GENDE  DBS  SIECLES  ") 247 

MATHA  ("  LA  LE"GENDE  DES  SIECLES  ") 251 

GEORGES  AND  JEANNE  ("  L'ART  D'ETRE  GRAND-PERE  ") 252 

LE  PAPE 255 

"  HERNANI,"  ACT  IV.,  SCENE  IV 257 

THE  "  GOLDEN  WEDDING  "  OF  "  HERNANI  " 259 

DON  CESAR  DE  BASAN  ("  RUY  BLAS  ") 261 

VICTOR  HUGO'S  HAND 264 

VICTOR  HUGO'S  GARDEN  IN  THE  AVENUE  D'EYLAU 269 

VICTOR  HUGO  IN  HIS  STUDY ...  270 

THE  SALON  IN  THE  AVENUE  D'EYLAU 271 

THE  POET'S  HOUSE  ON  FEBRUARY  27,  1881 273 

THE  CHILDREN'S  GREETING '. , 274 

2 


VICTOR  HUGO'S  BIRTHPLACE  AT  BE8AN<JON. 


INTRODUCTION. 


THE  27th  of  December,  1880,  was  a  fete 
day  at  Besan9on.  The  houses  in  the  pictur- 
esque old  town,  which  dates  further  back 
than  the  Roman  conquest,  were  hung  with 
flags,  and  the  echoes  of  music  came  back 
from  the  surrounding  hills.  On  the  banks 
of  the  river,  in  the  streets,  and  in  the  squares, 
a  well-dressed  crowd  was  awaiting  a  ceremo- 
nial of  honor.  One  name  was  upon  every 
lip — that  name  was  Victor  Hugo. 

A  torch -light  procession  had  opened  the 
rejoicings  on  the  evening  of  the  preceding 
day,  which  was  Sunday.  Rain  was  now 
falling  steadily,  but  no  unfavorableness  of 
weather  seemed  to  damp  the  ardor  of  the 
citizens. 

At  half -past  twelve  the  principal  people  of 
the  town,  and  the  visitors — many  of  whom 
had  come  from  Paris — assembled  at  the  mai- 
rie,  thence  to  proceed  to  the  Place  St.  Quen- 
tin. 

The  cortege  was  headed  by  the  town  bands, 
and  escorted  by  a  detachment  of  soldiers. 

M.  Oudet,  the  Mayor,  had  on  his  right  M. 
Rambaud,  the  chief  secretary  to  the  Minister 
of  Public  Instruction,  and  on  his  left  Gener- 
al Wolff,  commander  of  the  Corps  d'Armee. 
After  them  came  deputations  from  the  Sen- 
ate and  the  Chamber  of  Deputies,  generals, 
university  dons,  the  nephew  of  the  President 
of  the  Republic,  the  Rector  of  the  Academy, 
the  Prefect,  the  Municipal  Councillors,  and 
members  of  the  press. 

Victor  Hugo  himself  was  represented  by 
M.  Paul  Meurice. 

With  the  exception  of  a  few  residences  of 
the  aristocracy,  well-nigh  every  house  along 
the  route  was  gayly  decorated. 

The  deputations  halted  in  front  of  a  house 
in  the  street  facing  the  Place  St.  Quentin. 
Here  a  large  platform  had  been  erected,  cov- 
ered with  evergreens  and  flags  that  bore  the 
initials  V.  H.  worked  in  gold.  The  adjoin- 


ing windows  were  all  decorated  with  camel- 
lias in  full  bloom,  and  surmounted  with  es- 
cutcheons that  were  inscribed  with  the  names 
of  "Hernani,"  "Ruy  Bias,"  and  other  writ- 
ings of  the  poet. 

As  soon  as  the  audience  had  taken  their 
places,  the  Mayor  introduced  the  name  of  the 
great  author  in  whose  honor  they  had  met, 
and  whose  birth  they  were  about  to  celebrate. 
His  speech  was  interrupted  by  long  and  loud 
applause,  and  at  the  close  of  it  a  curtain  of 
crimson  velvet  was  removed  from  between 
the  two  first-floor  windows,  uncovering  a 
memorial  plate  which  henceforth  will  claim 
the  attention  of  every  passer-by. 

This  plate,  or  rather  medallion,  which  is  at- 
tached to  the  front  of  the  house,  is  of  bronze. 
It  represents  a  five -stringed  lyre  with  two 
laurel  branches  of  gold,  and  bearing  an  in- 
scription which,  according  to  the  poet's  ex- 
press desire,  consists  simply  of  his  name  and 
the  date  of  his  birth — 

VICTOR  HUGO: 

26TH  OP  FEBRUARY,  1802. 

The  lyre  is  surmounted  by  a  head,  typical 
of  the  Republic,  surrounded  by  rays.* 

Before  the  acclamations  died  away,  a  little 
girl,  the  daughter  of  tne  proprietor  of  the 
house,  came  forward  with  a  splendid  bouquet 
for  Victor  Hugo,  which  was  handed  by  the 
mayor  to  M.  Paul  Meurice. 

Leaving  the  Place  St.  Quentin,  the  cortege 
adjourned  to  the  stage  of  the  Besancon  The- 
atre, on  the  centre  of  which  had  been  placed 
a  fine  bust  of  Victor  Hugo,  executed  by  Da- 
vid. The  boxes,  balcony,  and  orchestra  were 
already  occupied  by  such  as  had  been  admit- 
ted by  tickets;  but  immediately  on  the -arri- 
val of  the  procession,  the  doors  of  the  house 


s  A  wood-cut  of  the  medalliou  is  given  on  the  first 
pnge  of  this  volume. 


INTRODUCTION. 


were  thrown  open,  and  the  general  public 
crowded  in  and  filled  the  place  to  overflow- 
ing. When  quietness  was  obtained,  the 
Mayor,  in'  a  short  speech,  related  what  had 
just  taken  place  in  front  of  the  now  famous 
house,  and  called  upon  .M .  Ilambaud  to  ad- 
dress the  assembly. 

M.  Rambaud  spoke  not  merely  as  the  rep- 
resentative of  the  Minister  of  Public  Instruc- 
tion, but  likewise  as  a  native  of  Besancon. 
He  made  a  vigorous  sketch  of  the  career  of 
the  great  man  they  had  met  to  honor.  He 
told  of  the  struggles  which  we  are  about  to 
record;  he  dwelt  upon  his  great  literary  bat- 
tles, his  gradual  attainment  of  victory  over 
thought  and  intellect,  his  ever-increasing  in- 
fluence, his  development  as  a  politician,  his 
internal  conflicts,  and  his  final  triumph;  he 
depicted  his  eighteen  years'  duel  with  the 
Empire  and  his  ultimate  success;  he  touched 
upon  the  leading  characteristics  of  all  his 
lyrical,  dramatic,  and  historical  writings; 
and  concluded  by  describing  how,  after  a 
life  fraught  with  conflicts,  trials,  and  sor- 
rows, he  found  his  recompense  in  the  re- 
vival of  his  country,  in  the  progress  of  de- 
mocracy, and,  not  least,  in  the  peaceful 
joys  of  home  and  in  the  society  of  his 
grandchildren. 

In  the  name  of  Victor  Hugo,  M.  Paul  Meu- 
rice  returned  his  cordial  thanks. 

A  concert  followed,  of  which  the  words 
that  were  set  to  music  were  all  extracts  from 
Victor  Hugo's  poetry.  Various  selections 
from  his  works  were  likewise  recited.  M. 
Paul  Meurice  next  read  a  letter  from  the 
hero  of  the  day  himself. 

"  December,  1SSO. 

"  It  is  with  deep  emotion  that  I  tender  my 
thanks  to  my  compatriots. 

"  I  am  a  stone  on  the  road  that  is  trodden 
by  humanity;  but  that  road  is  a  good  one; 
Man  is  master  neither  of  his  life  nor  of  his 
death.  He  can  but  offer  to  his  fellow-citi- 
zens his  efforts  to  diminish  human  suffering, 
he  can  but  offer  to  God  his  indomitable  faith 
in  the  growth  of  liberty. 

"  ViCTOBHuoo." 

In  the  midst  of  a  perfect  hurricane  of 
cheers,  the  marble  bust  was  crowned  with  a 
wreath  of  golden  laurel,  and  one  hundred 
and  fifty  musicians  performed  the  "Marseil- 


laise," the  whole  audience  standing.  The 
crowd  then  left  the  theatre,  all  shouting 
vociferously,  "Vive  Victor  Hugo!"  Vive  la 
Republiquel" 

In  the  evening  the  town  was  illuminated, 
and  over  a  hundred  guests  sat  down  to  a 
banquet  in  the  fine  dining-room  of  the  Pa- 
lais Granvelle,  where  many  more  speeches 
were  delivered. 

The  fete  was  unique  of  its  kind. 

It  is  our  object  in  the  following  pages, 
which  are  dedicated  to  Victor  Hugo  and  his 
century  (for  the  century  must  ever  be  associ- 
ated with  his  name),  to  testify  our  admira- 
tion for  a  man  whose  every  action  com- 
mands our  respect;  for  the  writer  who  has 
infused  new  life  into  the  antiquated  diction 
of  our  language;  for  the  poet  whose  verses 
purify  while  they  fascinate  the  soul ;  for  the 
dramatist  whose  plays  exhibit  his  sympathy 
with  the  unendowed  classes;  for  the  histori- 
an who  has  branded  with  ignominy  the  tyr- 
anny of  oppressors;  for  the  satirist  who  has 
avenged  the  outrages  of  conscience;  for  the 
orator  who  has  defended  every  noble  and 
righteous  cause;  for  the  exile  who  has  stood 
up  undaunted  to  vindicate  justice;  and,  final- 
ly, for  the  master-mind  whose  genius  has 
shed  a  halo  of  glory  over  France. 

The  task  before  us  is  not  an  easy  one;  but, 
aided  by  many  who  have  given  their  own 
personal  reminiscences,  and  having  enjoyed 
various  opportunities  of  conversation  with 
Victor  Hugo  himself,  in  which  we  have 
gathered  not  a  few  unpublished  anecdotes, 
we  shall  trust  to  fulfil  our  undertaking  not  un- 
worthily. It  is  the  small  coin  of  a  great  his- 
tory that  we  have  been  collecting,  and  which 
in  its  aggregate  is  offered  to  the  acceptance 
of  our  readers.  If  the  contemporaries  of 
Homer  or  Dante  were  alive,  with  what  in- 
terest we  should  learn  from  their  lips  any 
fresh  details  of  the  doings  of  those  giants  of 
literature!  And  something  of  the  same  kind 
of  eagerness,  we  would  believe,  will  be  felt 
even  now  in  following  the  career  of  the  great 
genius  of  our  own  age. 

"We  have  described  the  enthusiasm  and 
pride  that  reigned  in  the  streets  of  Besan£on 
on  the  memorable  fete  day  in  December, 
1880;  that  enthusiasm  will  still  be  felt  ev- 
erywhere, and  that  pride  will  never  dimin- 
ish. Renown  will  not  fail  to  attend  the  name 
of  VICTOR  HUGO. 


BUST  OF  VICTOR  HUGO, 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS  TIME. 


CHAPTER  I. 

Genealogy.  —  Family  Arms. — Bishop  of  PtolemaTde.  —  Count  Leopold  Sigisbert  Hugo,  Father  of  Victor.— 
His  Mother. — Maternal  Descent.  —  Sponsors.— Certificate  of  Birth. — Signification  of  Name. — Verses  in 
"Lcs  Feuilles  d'Automne."— Opinion  of  Bisontins. — Besanpon  never  Visited  by  Victor  Hugo. 


THE  Hugo  family,  whose  members  have  in 
latter  times  become  illustrious  both  in  litera- 
ture and  in  arms,  were  originally  natives  of 
Lorraine.  In  the  course  of  last  century 
their  genealogical  tree  was  carefully  drawn 
up  by  D'Hozier  in  the  fourth  registry  of  the 
French  peerage. 

Georges  Hugo,  the  son  of  Jean  Hugo,  a 
captain  in  the  army  of  Rene  II.,  Duke  of 
Lorraine,  resided  at  Rouvroi-sur-Meuse,  and, 
on  the  14th  of  April,  1535,  obtained  letters- 
patent  of  nobility  for  himself  and  his  de- 
scendants from  Cardinal  Jean  de  Lorraine, 
Archbishop  of  Rheims.  These  letters  dated 
from  Lillebonne  in  Normandy,  and  the  en- 
noblement was  afterwards  confirmed  on  Oc- 
tober 16,  1537,  by  Antoine,  Duke  of  Lor- 
raine, brother  of  the  cardinal,  by  other  let- 
ters-patent dated  from  Nancy.  They  testify 
that  although  Georges  Hugo  was  quite 
young  when  he  obtained  his  warrant  of  no- 
bility, he  had  already  seen  much  active  ser- 
vice; also  that  he  had  married  a  lady  of  Bla- 
mont  of  noble  birth. 

The  arms  of  the  ancient  Hugo  family  are : 
Azure ;  on  a  chief  argent  two  martlets  sable ; 
on  the  escutcheon  a  vol  banneret  azure  bear- 
ing a  f  esse  argent.  In  the  arms  of  the  house 
of  Lorraine  itself  there  are  three  martlets  ar- 
gent, so  that  the  duke  could  scarcely  have 
conferred  higher  dignity  on  his  captain. 

Charles  Hyacinthe  Hugo,  the  fifth  descend- 
ant from  Georges,  obtained  fresh  letters-pat- 
ent; and  his  grandson,  Sigisbert  Hugo,  com- 
menced service  in  1788. 

Although  the  authenticity  of  this  descent 
has  been  questioned  by  certain  genealogists, 
who  assert  that  Victor  Hugo's  grandfather 


was  engaged  in  trade,  it  appears  to  admit  of 
no  question.  It  is,  indeed,  quite  likely  that 
the  statement  is  true,  inasmuch  as  many  of 
the  most  illustrious  families  have  had  to  sub- 
mit to  reverses;  but  it  does  not  leave  it  the 
less  certain  that  Victor  Hugo,  who  would 
never  blush  to  own  himself  of  humble  ex- 
traction if  he  were  so,  and  who  estimates 
men  solely  by  their  merits,  is  nevertheless  a 
scion  of  that  ancient  nobility  that  earned  its 
venerable  titles  by  services  rendered  to  the 
commonwealth. 

The  roll  of  the  poet's  celebrated  ancestors 
includes  Charles  Louis  Hugo,  the  French  his- 
torian, who  died  in  1739.  After  graduating 
as  doctor  in  theology,  he  devoted  himself  for 
some  time  to  tuition,  and  subsequently  estab- 
lished a  printing-press  in  the  monastery  of  the 
order  of  the  Premonstrants,  to  which  he  had 
attached  himself  for  the  purpose  of  advancing 
learned  studies.  The  result  of  a  long  dis- 
pute which  he  had  with  the  Bishop  of  Toul 
was  that  Pope  Benedict  III.  gave  judgment 
in  his  favor,  and,  moreover,  bestowed  upon 
him  the  title  of  Bishop  of  Ptolemai'de.  He 
was  equally  well  known  as  Abbe  of  Estival. 
He  was  the  author  of  several  books,  one, 
among  others,  published  under  the  nom  de 
plume  of  Baleicourt,  being  a  critical  and  his- 
torical treatise  on  the  "Origin  and  Geneal- 
ogy of  the  House  of  Lorraine  ;"  it  appeared 
at  Nancy  in  1711.  Another  of  his  works, 
comprising  the  history  of  Lorraine,  was  is- 
sued under  the  nom  de  plume  of  Jean  Pierre 
Louis,  P.P. 

Our  poet's  father,  having  obtained  the  rank 
of  general  under  the  first  Empire,  had  really 
the  right  to  assume  the  title  of  count,  and  to 


24 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


transmit  it  as  hereditary ;  but  be  never  avail- 
ed bimself  of  tbe  privilege,  although  Louis 
XVIII.,  in  an  order  dated  November  14, 

1814,  confirmed  him  in  his  rank  of  major- 
general  from  September  11, 1813.     A  son  of 
the  Revolution,  he  resigned  his  sword   in 

1815.  More  than  one  of  his  associates  re- 
mained in  the  service  imtil  1830,  and  some 
even  until  1848;  but  he  was  not  a  man  to 
make  any  compromise  with  his  conscience. 

Brief  as  this  sketch  of  his  genealogy  may 
be,  it  will  suffice  to  exhibit  how  the  blood  of 
Lorraine  flows  in  Victor  Hugo's  veins;  his 
forefathers  "  avaient  donjon  sur  roche  et  fief 
dans  la  campagne." 

Any  notice  of  this  kind,  however, would  be 
altogether  incomplete  without  mention  of  his 
descent  by  his  mother's  side.  She  was  the 
daughter  of  a  wealthy  ship-owner  at  Nantes, 
and  granddaughter  of  one  of  the  leaders  of 
the  bourgeoisie  of  the  province  that  was  so 
long  and  faithfully  the  valiant  defence  of 
Catholic  loyalty.  She  was  also  a  cousin  of 
Constantine  Francois,  Count  de  Chasseboeuf, 
universally  known  as  Volney,  the  author  of 
"  Les  Ruines,"  a  book  which,  although  anti- 
quated, and  apparently  on  the  way  to  be  for- 
gotten, yet  contains  many  eloquent  and  strik- 
ing passages  upon  the  fate  of  empires.  Anoth- 
er cousin  was  Count  Cornet,  who  played  no 
inconsiderable  part  in  political  affairs,  both 
during  the  first  Empire  and  before  its  time. 

A  few  words  must  be  said  about  the  per- 
sonal history  of  the  poet's  parents.  • 

Joseph  Leopold  Sigisbert  Hugo  was  born 
in  Nancy,  and  at  the  age  of  fourteen  was  en- 
rolled as  a  military  cadet.  His  family  may, 
without  exaggeration,  be  described  as  a  race 
of  heroes:  five  of  his  brothers  were  killed 
during  the  wars  of  the  Revolution;  the  sixth 
became  a  major  in  the  infantry,  while  he 
himself,  the  father  of  the  illustrious  son 
whose  name  will  ever  be  associated  with  the 
nineteenth  century,  rose  to  the  rank  of  gen- 
eral. 

After  being  appointed  aide-de-camp  and 
secretary  to  General  Alexandre  Beauharnais, 
Joseph  Hugo  left  him  almost  immediately, 
in  order  to  follow  his  intimate  friend,  Gen- 
eral Muscar,  into  La  Vendee.  It  was  the 
company  under  the  command  of  this  officer 
which  captured  Charette  in  the  woods  of 
Chabotiere  in  1795.  In  the  course  of  the 
campaign,  young  Hugo  had  many  opportu- 
nities of  exhibiting  his  courage  and  good- 
nature, and  earned  his  captain's  epaulets. 

His  duties  very  frequently  took  him  into 


Nantes,  where  he  became  acquainted  with  a 
ship-owner  named  Tri-hudict,  who  had  tlmr 
daughters,  one  of  whom,  Sophie,  soon  stole 
the  captain's  heart  and  subsequently  became 
his  wife. 

There  is  no  need  here  to  recapitulate  all 
the  details  of  the  union;  they  have  already 
been  recounted  in  Madame  Victor  Hugo's 
book.  The  marriage  took  place  in  Paris, 
whither  the  bridegroom  had  been  summoned 
as  reporter  to  the  first  council  of  war  on  the 
Seine.  Two  sons,  Abel  and  Eugene,  were 
born  in  succession ;  and  shortly  after  the  birth 
of  the  latter  the  father  had  to  start  off  on  the 
Rhine  campaign,  being  appointed  attache  to 
General  Moreau,  the  chief  of  whose  staff 
was  Adjutant  -  general  Victor  Lahorie  and 
his  aide-de-camp  Brigadier  Jacques  Delelee, 
of  Besancon.  With  both  of  these  officers 
Major  Hugo  formed  an  intimate  acquaint- 
ance. 

.  His  character  is  described  in  the  "  Biogra- 
phic des  Contemporains  "  as  a  happy  mixt- 
ure of  candor,  honesty,  and  benevolence.  He 
was  intelligent  in  his  conversation,  which  was 
ever  full  of  interesting  reminiscences  equal- 
ly amusing  and  instructive.  As  an  author 
he  has  left  some  important  military  works, 
which  we  shall  subsequently  have  occasion 
to  notice.  He  set  his  children  a  fine  exam- 
ple of  duty,  being  ever  their  instructor  in  the 
paths  of  honor. 

On  his  return  from  the  Rhine  he  had  at- 
tained commander's  rank ;  and  in  the  begin- 
ning of  1801  he  was  appointed  to  the  com- 
mand of  the  fourth  battalion  of  the  twentieth 
half -brigade,  then  quartered  at  Besancon. 

At  that  time  Jacques  Delelee,  Moreau's 
aide-de-camp,  had  recently  returned  to  Besan- 
9on,  and  was  residing  with  his  young  wife, 
Marie  Anne  Dessirier,  in  a  house  in  the  Rue 
des  Granges.  This  lady,  who  died  in  1850, 
used  often  to  relate  the  story  of  Victor  Hu- 
go's birth. 

On  his  arrival  at  the  town,  Major  Hugo 
took  up  his  residence  with  his  old  friend  De- 
lelee, partaking  of  his  hospitality  for  a  period 
of  three  months.  At  the  end  of  that  time  he 
sent  for  his  wife  and  two  children,  and  rent- 
ed the  first  floor  of  a  house  in  the  Place  du 
Capitole. 

Though  the  wife  of  a  soldier  of  the  Revo- 
lution and  of  the  Empire — a  man  personally 
attached  to  Desaix,  Jourdan,  and  Joseph 
Bonaparte — Madame  Hugo  was  herself  the 
friend  of  Madame  La  Rochejaquelein.  A 
true  Vendean,  she  was  intelligent,  brave,  and 


26 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


gentle,  and  a  sincere,  though  by  no  means 
bigoted,  Catholic.  She  was  a  model  mother. 

Within  a  year  alter  she  had  rejoined  her 
husband,  the  birth  of  a  third  child  was  an- 
tiripatcil.  Major  Hugo,  having  already  two 
sons,  expressed  a  hope  that  it  would  be  a 
girl,  and  announced  his  intention  of  nainin.ir 
her  Victorine.  A  godmother  was  already 
determined  on  in  the  person  of  Madame  De- 
lelce.  but  a  godfather  had  still  to  be  sought, 
and  it  occurred  to  the  parents  to  ask  General 
Lahorie,  who  was  then  in  Paris,  to  undertake 
the  sponsorship.  Madame  Hugo  submitted 
her  request  in  such  a  charming  letter  that 
the  general  did  not  hesitate  to  acquiesce  in 
her  desire. 

In  due  time  the  child  was  born,  but  it 
proved  another  boy — a  miserable  little  creat- 
ure, more  dead  than  alive.  Its  decrepit 
condition  made  it  indispensable  that  the 
infant  should  be  baptized  at  once ;  a  hurried 
visit,  however,  to  the  iu<iiri<  was  previously 
made,  where  the  register  subjoined  was  en- 
tered: 


On  the  opening  page  of  the  "Feuilles 
d'Automne,"  Victor  Hugo  has  written  some 
well-known  lines,  \vhieh  form  a  sort  of  poet- 
ical paraphrase  of  the  above  register  of  his 
birth.  They  run  somewhat  to  this  effect : 

"  This  century  two  years  had  rolled  along, 
When  in  Besancon,  citadelled  and  stnniL', 
A  little  babe  was  born,  the  heir  of  pain, 
A  scion  both  of  Breliigne  and  Lorraine  ; 
A  little  babe,  so  fragile  and  BO  weak, 
It  seemed  to  come  to  life  its  death  to  seek  ; 
So  delicate,  its  like  'twere  rare  to  find, 
A  tiny  seed  blown  helpless  by  the  wind; 
A  mere  chimera— yea,  a  thing  of  naught — 
To  rear  it  must  exceed  a  mother's  thought: 
Asleep,  its  head  bent  down  upon  its  breast, 
It  looked  to  take  upon  its  bier  its  rest. 
That  little  babe  myself!  And  ah  1  how  well 
I  might,  the  story  of  my  progress  tell ! 
How,  all-responsive  to  my  mother's  prayer, 
How,  all-succeeding  to  my  mother's  care, 
I  gaiu'd  new  life,  found  day  by  day  new  pow'r, 
And  through  her  love  survive  to  see  this  hour ; 
A  guardian  dear,  a  very  angel  she 
To  all  her  sons,  but  most  of  all  to  me  I" 

The  verses  in  the  original  are  very  fine; 
but  we  may  leave  them  without  further 


EXTRAIT    DE    NAISSANCE 


Natssance.  Du  ^///t«A*-^du  roois  da 
Actc  de  naissave  de 


de  la  lUpublique' 


..wvta    w     ..-.---•,r-     —     -. VVW«W*"^        •     ^ 

/  .  oi  la  /Wr  !7&r>  ip<V     hew e$  d4~'« Puf*''  fils  de 

(/*U»f/     St-wUffa*',  f!*  W*l#~«gg*fa1*' et  de 


fcdemeurant  i  rttJtltf*''     =="  maries,  presents 
rfqijAj^^"  -rft*f+  '•"" :=;=J~  le  sexe  de  1'enfant  a  etc1  reconnu  ttre, 

'Premier  te  raoi  ft %fa<*^/^t^6s.  ,<• '&{?*•  fa^l  *~><.  ^Aff^J*  ' 

tg*  da   J/t«2<tK<Ie^  '='    •=^a"s>  **WW  ^u  Jc/r }**)«"<**•'- 

Second  temoin  ,  ffla.*.it'Atnuj'3*/'flicn^ c/iaui*.  ?ti  &'•/.  y*uuj  ^     • 
agetdo  •»/»»« A  «^  &itf  ^=B ' am >^dornicili6  a  /'..^.•/^-!.-^  _r. 

Suc  la  .riquMitioo  i  nou;  faitp  par  £&&}<•>**£.  -fl'f.^/Jt^i/ 

//K*,.  ,,,<u.>fit-  (•<«/*«. f  *=^  /  r     ,^cz^> 

^^^fifeiA^^^i  ^^^ 

^^5^^^~^*'..- —     -^  *~  //  ^<i- 

Ctforftatesurvant  la  loi,  par  moi    c-/i<i7c^f  •»«..».  ~  »^t 
6.Pj<,l»t-  <«,<_-  Maire  d«  <i?2$~c^»/,.*-.^  M-t,  faisant  Je$  Yonctiom 
d'Officiet  public  dc  I'iut  civil.     ..y      /    ^ 
C/^  X^*-^ 

^T} 


It  will  be  observed  that  Madame  Delelee 
figures  as  a  witness,  women  at  that  time 
having  the  right  to  act  in  such  a  capacity. 
Madame  Hugo  recovered  so  quickly  from 
her  confinement  that  twenty-two  days  later 
she  appeared  as  witness  to  the  birth-register 
of  the  son  of  one  of  her  husband's  fellow- 
officers,  which  bears  her  signature.  She  was 
at  that  date  twenty -five  years  of  age,  her 
husband  being  twenty-eight. 


comment,  to  inquire  into  the  significance  of 
their  author's  illustrious  name. 

In  Old  German  the  word  "Hugo"  is  the 
equivalent  of  the  Latin  "spiritus,"  betoken- 
ing breath  or  life.  To  this  cognomen  were 
prefixed  the  names  Victor  Marie,  being  those 
of  the  two  sponsors,  General  Victor  Fanneau 
de  Lahorie  and  Madame  Delelee,  and  not  in- 
aptly has  it  been  remarked  that  "the  north- 
ern appellation  was  mellowed  by  the  south- 


GENERAL  HUGO,  VICTOR  HUGO  8  FATHER. 


28 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


era,  the  Roman  came  in  to  give  completeness 
to  the  Teuton."  As  Alexandra  Dumas  the 
elder  has  finely  rcndm-d  it,  "the  name  <>t 
Victor  Hugo  stands  forth  as  the  conquering 
spirit,  the  triumphant  soul,  the  breath  of  vic- 
tory!" 

And  it  is  indeed  no  exaggeration  to  main- 
tain that  his  is  eminently  a  triumphant  soul 
<>f  this  our  century,  so  that  the  men  of  Be- 
sancon  may  fitly  glory  in  the  master-mind 
that,  as  it  were  by  chance,  first  saw  the  light  of 
day  among  them.  The  people  of  the  place 
declare  that,  although  it  was  the  blood  of 
Brittany  and  Lorraine  that  circulated  in  his 
veins,  it  was  not  solely  to  his  mother's  care, 
but  to  the  salubrity  of  the  climate,  that  he 
owed  his  life;  they  boast  that  the  pure  air  of 
Franche-Comte,  the  air  which  makes  sound 
bodies  and  sound  minds,  rendered  him  ab- 
solutely one  of  themselves.  They  further 
maintain  that  Besancon  was  never  a  truly 
Spanish  town,  but  that  for  centuries  before  it 
belonged  to  France  it  had  had  an  independent 
existence,  preserving  its  municipal  institu- 
tions intact;  and  that,  with  the  pure  air  of  its 
mountains,  it  had  handed  down  to  its  chil- 
dren from  generation  to  generation  those 
principles  of  liberty  and  equality  which  Vic- 
tor Hugo  imbibed  with  his  mother's  milk. 

An  impartial  historian  cannot  ignore  the 


fact  that  Victor  Hugo  was  born  with  a 
thoroughly  sound  constitution.  Sickly  and 
feeble  though  he  looked,  he  had  a  good  broad 
chest  and  pair  of  shoulders,  and  was  what  is 
generally  termed  stoutly  built.  To  this,  as 
well  as  to  the  untiring  care  and  attention 
that  lie  received  from  his  mother,  he  was  in- 
debted for  his  life. 

Entered  in  the  register  as  a  soldier's  son, 
Victor  Hugo  left  Besanpon  while  still  an  in- 
fant in  long  clothes,  and  has  never  since 
vi.-ited  his  birthplace.  Not  even  in  Decem- 
ber, 1880,  was  he  able  to  proceed  thither;  and 
although  more  than  once  he  has  formed  the 
project  of  undertaking  the  journey,  his  inces- 
sant labors  have  always  interfered  to  hinder 
him  from  carrying  out  his  purpose. 

Unlike  Lamartine,  who  makes  frequent 
mention  of  the  scenes  of  his  childhood,  and 
speaks  again  and  again  of  Milly  and  Saint- 
Point,  Victor  Hugo  would  appear  never  to 
have  introduced  the  name  of  his  birthplace 
except  in  the  verses  already  referred  to.  He 
knew  no  particulars  about  the  house  in  which 
he  first  saw  the  light,  and  the  regard  which 
has  recently  been  bestowed  upon  the  build- 
ing, under  the  presidency  of  the  mayor  of  the 
town,  has  made  him  acquainted  with  various 
particulars  which  have  now  become  matters 
of  history. 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


CHAPTER  II. 

Infancy.— From  Besancon  to  Marseilles. — From  Marseilles  to  Elba. — First  Stay  in  Paris. — The  House  in  the 
Rue  lie  Clichy. — The  Well  in  the  Court-yard — Departure  for  Italy. — Reminiscences  of  the  Journey.— 
Early  Impressions.— Victor  Hugo's  own  Account  of  Youthful  Travels. — The  Marble  Palace  of  Avellino. 
— Colonel  Hugo  in  Spain  with  Joseph  Bonaparte. — Return  of  the  Family  to  Paris. 


THE  new-born  infant,  the  third  son  of 
Major  Hugo,  was  unlike  either  of  his  elder 
brothers. 

Abel,  the  oldest  of  the  three,  exhibited  that 
healthy  robustness  which  ever  charms  the  eye. 
Eugene's  constitution  was  such  as  to  give  no 
anxiety,  but  Victor  remained  so  sickly  that 
for  fifteen  months  after  his  birth  his  shoul- 
ders seemed  incapable  of  supporting  the 
weight  of  his  head,  of  which  it  has  been  said 
that,  "as  if  already  containing  the  germs  of 
mighty  thought  that  were  awaiting  their  de- 
velopment, it  could  not  be  prevented  from 
falling  prone  upon  his  breast." 

With  the  perseverance  characteristic  of  a 
true  mother,  Madame  Hugo  succeeded  in  res- 
cuing her  child  from  the  very  jaws  of  death, 
and  not  only  did  he  grow  up  himself  to  en- 
joy a  life  of  health  and  vigor,  but  he  has  im- 
parted life  to  an  entire  nation  by  his  books, 
his  sentiments,  his  intellect,  and  his  example. 
The  generations  of  the  present  are  animated 
by  his  spirit;  the  generations  of  the  future 
will  not  cease  to  feel  its  influence  still. 

While  it  was  as  yet  quite  uncertain 
whether  the  sinister  forebodings  of  the  accou- 
cheur who  had  assisted  at  his  birth  would  not 
be  realized,  Victor  Hugo,  at  the  age  of  six 
weeks,  was  taken  from  Besancon  and  carried 
off  on  a  toilsome  journey  to  Marseilles. 
Here,  before  long,  his  mother  was  obliged  to 
leave  him,  having  to  go  to  Paris  to  endeavor 
to  obtain  a  change  of  brigade  for  her  hus- 
band. The  little  infant  suffered  very  keenly 
from  the  separation,  and  it  is  said  shed  floods 
of  tears  over  the  bonbons  with  which  his 
father  tried  to  console  him  for  his  loss. 

It  was  some  months  before  Madame  Hugo 
rejoined  her  family.  Her  application  had 
not  been  attended  with  the  success  she  an- 
ticipated. The  reward  that  her  husband  ob- 
tained for  his  services  was  little  better  than 
exile,  for  he  received  orders  to  take  command 
of  a  garrison  in  the  Isle  of  Elba.  Thus  it 
fell  out,  as  Alexandre  Dumas  has  remarked 


in  his  "Memoires,"  that  the  author  of  the 
"  Ode  £  la  Colonne  "  detail  commencer  a  mvre 
in  the  very  island  where  the  great  Napoleon 
devait  commencer  d  mourir. 

The  first  language,  therefore,  spoken  by 
Victor  was  Italian — the  Italian  of  the  Isles; 
and  the  first  word  he  was  known  to  speak 
after  the  articulation  of  papa,  mamma,  which 
is  common  to  children  of  every  tongue,  was 
the  term  cattiva  (naughty),  which  he  applied 
to  his  nurse. 

Moving  from  island  to  island,  the  family 
proceeded  from  Porto  Ferrajo  to  Bastia;  but 
of  these  various  peregrinations  the  child's 
mind  did  not  retain  a  shadow  of  remem- 
brance, and  the  first  intercourse  which  he 
had  with  the  world  on  the  threshold  of  his 
existence  would  appear  to  have  left  no  trace 
upon  his  memory. 

Nevertheless,  it  has  been  written  that  "the 
first  scene  upon  which  his  eye  fell  with  any 
intelligence  was  the  rugged  outline  of  the 
obscure  spot  since  so  famous.  Already  for- 
tuitous circumstances  were  bringing  his 
young  life  into  harmony  with  the  great  des- 
tiny that  lay  before  him;  the  thread,  frail 
and  all  but  invisible,  was  already  being 
mingled  with  the  splendid  woof,  and  was 
running,  hidden  though  it  might  be  for  a 
time,  beneath  the  new-made  purple  of  which 
he  was  to  dignify  the  last  shred."* 

After  a  year  marked  by  many  vicissitudes, 
Victor  Hugo's  father  was  summoned  to  join 
the  army  in  Italy.  Joseph  Bonaparte,  hith- 
erto plenipotentiary,  had  just  been  nomi- 
nated King  of  Naples ;  and  retaining  a  kind 
remembrance  of  his  friend  the  major  at  Lune- 
ville  and  Besan9on,  he  invited  him  to  join 
his  fortunes  and  to  assist  him  in  establishing 
his  throne  in  that  goodly  city  of  which  it  has 
been  said  that ' '  a  man  should  see  Naples  and 
die."  The  officer  had  recently  been  promot- 
ed to  the  rank  of  lieutenant-colonel,  or,  as  it 


"  "  Biographic  Rabbe  et  Boisjolin  "  (1834). 


30 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


was  at  that  period  more  generally  designated, 
gros-major. 

Napoleon,  having  long  treated  this  faithful 
soldier  with  much  injustice,  now  deigned  to 
signify  his  assent  to  his  change  of  service, 
adding  that  he  was  pleased  to  see  the  French 
element  among  his  brother's  forces,  which 
were  the  wings  of  his  own  army. 

Accordingly  the  lieutenant-colonel  joined 
King  Joseph,  but,  concerned  for  his  family, 
and  aware  that  they  could  hardly  fail  to  suf- 
fer from  a  continuation  of  their  wandering 
life,  he  determined  to  send  them  to  Paris, 
where  they  arrived  at  the  end  of  1805  or  early 
in  the  following  year. 

Madame  Hugo,  with  her  three  young  chil- 
dren, took  up  her  abode  at  24  Rue  de  Clichy. 
The  house,  like  most  of  those  in  which  the 
poet  spent  his  early  days,  has  been  entirely 
destroyed,  and  its  site  -is  now  occupied  by 
the  square  surrounding  the  Church  of  the 
Holy  Trinity. 

This  is  the  first  place  of  residence  of  which 
Victor  Hugo  has  any  distinct  recollection. 
As  he  has  himself  informed  ns,  there  was  a 
goat  in  the  court-yard,  and  a  well  overhung 


THE  WELL  IN  THE  GARDEN. 

by  a  weeping  willow,  and  not  far  from  the 
well  stood  a  cattle-trough. 

Round  this  well  he  used  to  play,  having 
for  his  companion  young  Delon,  who  was 
subsequently  condemned  on  account  of  the 
Saumur  affair,  and  died  in  Greece  while  com- 
manding Lord  Byron's  artillery.  Victor  was 
sent  to  school  in  the  Rue  de  Mont-Blanc, 
where  he  was  treated  with  special  care  on 
account  of  his  remaining  so  delicate;  he  was 
habitually  so  low-spirited  that  no  one  except 
his  mother  could  ever  make  him  smile. 


Meanwhile  the  gros-major  was  commis- 
sioned to  capture  Pra  Diavolo,  the  bandit- 
patriot  who  was  disputing  Joseph  Bona- 
parte's accession  to  the  throne  of  Naples;  and 
in  spite  of  its  difficulty  and  danger,  he  accom- 
plished his  task,  and  succeeded  afterwards  in 
reducing  the  bands  of  La  Puglia.  In  ac- 
knowledgment of  these  services  the  king 
made  him  colonel  of  royal  Corsica  and  gov- 
ernor of  Avellino. 

As  soon  as  peace  was  restored  in  Italy,  the 
lieutenant-colonel  again  sent  for  his  wife  and 
children;  and  thus  in  October,  1807,  Victor 
Hugo  recommenced  the  series  of  travels 
which  began  before  he  could  walk,  and  have 
continued  throughout  his  life.  It  was  dur- 
ing this  sojourn  in  Italy  that  his  powers  of 
observation  began  to  develop  themselves,  and 
he  received  his  first  artistic  impressions. 
Many  a  time  must  he  have  been  thrilled  with 
his  father's  stories  of  the  romantic  exploits 
of  Fra  Diavolo ;  and  although  he  was  only 
five  years  old  at  the  time,  it  is  certain  that  he 
never  forgot  this  journey. 

Wearisome  as  was  the  route  from  Paris  to 
Naples,  it  was  not  devoid  of  interesting  in- 
cidents. A  number  of  these  have 
been  related  in  Madame  Victor  Hu- 
go's book,  and  others  were  recount- 
ed by  the  poet  himself  to  Dumas, 
one  of  his  best  of  friends. 

Dumas  writes:  "Often  on  my 
return  from  Italy,  whither  I  have 
been  some  fifteen  or  twenty  times, 
Hugo,  who  had  merely  once  trav- 
ersed the  country,  would  speak  to 
me  of  the  grand  aspects  of  that 
beautiful  land  which  appeared  as 
fresh  in  his  memory  as  if  he  had 
been  my  companion  in  all  my  jour- 
neys. But  he  always  spoke  of  ob- 
jects not  so  much  as  they  really 
were,  but  in  association  with  some 
accidental  circumstance  that  for  the 
time  had  diverted  his  attention  from 
their  normal  character.  For  instance,  Parma 
was  to  him  always  in  the  midst  of  floods; 
the  volcanic  rock  of  Aquapendente  was  be- 
ing rent  by  the  lightning,  and  Trajan's  Col- 
umn never  ceased  to  be  surrounded  by  exca- 
vations at  its  base.  Of  other  places,  such  as 
Florence,  with  its  battlemented  hostels,  its 
massive  places  and  granite  fortresses;  of 
Rome,  with  its  fountains,  its  Egyptian-like 
obelisks,  and  its  Bernese  colonnade,  sister  to 
the  Louvre;  of  Naples,  with  its  promenades, 
its  Posilippo,  its  Strada  di  Toledo,  its  bay 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


31 


and  its  islands;   of  Mount  Vesuvius  —  his 
ideas  were  all  as.  correct  as  possible. 
****** 

"It  was  not  at  Naples  that  accommoda- 
tion was  provided  for  Madame  Hugo  and 
her  children,  but  at  Avellino,  the  capital  of 
the  province  of  which  her  husband  had  been 
appointed  governor.  The  palace  in  which 
they  were  quartered,  like  most  of  the  struct- 
ures in  the  country  where  marble  is  more 
plentiful  than  stone,  was  a  palace  of  marble. 
It  had  one  peculiarity  that  could  hardly  fail 
to  strike  the  eye  of  a  child,  or  to  make  a  last- 
ing impression  on  his  memory.  One  of  the 
earthquakes  so  common  in  the  Italian  penin- 
sula had  recently  shaken  Calabria  from  end 
to  end.  Like  other  buildings,  the  palace  at 
Avellino  had  oscillated  in  the  shock,  but  be- 
ing substantially  based  on  its  foundation,  af 
ter  tottering  till  it  threatened  to  fall,  it  had 
stood  its  ground,  though  ominously  damaged 
from  top  to  bottom,  and  diagonally  across 
the  wall  of  Victor's  room  there  was  a  crack 
through  which  he  could  see  the  surrounding 
country  almost  as  well  as  through  his  window. 

' '  The  palace  was  built  upon  a  kind  of 
precipice  covered  with  large  nut-trees,  pro- 
ducing the  huge  filberts  called  '  avelines ' 
after  the  district  in  which  they  grow.  Dur- 
ing the  season  when  the  nuts  were  ripe  the 
children  spent  much  of  their  time  in  gather- 
ing the  clusters,  many  of  which  quite  over- 
hung the  precipice;  and  then  doubtless  it 
was  that  Hugo  had  his  first  experience  in 
climbing,  and  gained  that  indifference  to 
crags  and  precipices  which  to  me,  giddy  as 
I  always  am  on  a  first-floor  balcony,  has  al- 
ways been  a  matter  of  admiration."  * 

To  some  readers  these  details  may  seem 
too  trivial  to  merit  any  record;  but,  as  the 
brilliant  writer  above  quoted  has  remarked, 
in  treating  of  an  incomparable  genius  like 
Victor  Hugo,  who  has  played  so  grand  a 
part  in  the  literary  and  political  history  of 

*  "Mcuioires  de  Dumas." 


his  country,  it  is  the  duty  of  one  who  has 
known  him  to  lay  before  the  eyes  alike  of 
his  contemporaries  and  of  posterity  every 
possible  touch  of  light  and  shade  which  has 
contributed  to  the  character  of  the  man  and 
of  the  poet. 

Madame  Hugo  and  her  children  did  not 
remain  in  Italy  more  than  a  year.  In  1808, 
when  Napoleon  had  decided  that  the  Span- 
ish Bourbons  were  no  longer  to  reign,  Jo- 
seph Bonaparte  was  transferred  from  Na- 
ples to  be  King  of  Spain.  Lieutenant-colo- 
nel Hugo  followed  him  to  Madrid;  but  as  he 
was  well  aware  of  the  hazard  involved  in 
settling  in  a  country  where  war  was  going 
on,  and  as  his  wife's  health  and  his  chil- 
dren's education  had  already  suffered  much 
from  their  long  journeyings,  he  made  up  his 
mind  to  part  with  them  for  a  time,  and  sent 
them  to  Paris. 

Arrived  at  the  capital,  Madame  Hugo  was 
fully  resolved  to  devote  herself  assiduously 
to  the  education  of  her  family.  Her  resi- 
dence in  the  capacious  palace  at  Avellino 
had  made  her  appreciate  the  advantages  of 
having  airy  and  ample  space  for  the  boys  to 
play,  and  she  exerted  herself  to  find  a  house 
with  a  flower-garden,  which  at  the  same 
time  should  be  in  the  neighborhood  of  the 
schools. 

At  first,  and  with  scarcely  due  considera- 
tion, she  took  up  her  abode  in  a  house  near 
the  Church  of  St.  Jacques  du  Haut-Pas.  Vic- 
tor Hugo  does  not  recollect  the  precise  spot, 
and  does  not  even  know  whether  the  place 
is  still  in  existence ;  he  only  remembers  that 
the  ground-floor  on  which  he  lived  was  ap- 
proached by  a  passage  from  the  street. 

But  although  the  garden  was  large  enough 
for  the  children's  play,  the  apartments  were 
much  too  small  for  domestic  convenience, 
and  had  to  be  given  up  almost  immediately. 
The  young  family  was  removed  to  another 
abode  not  far  distant,  which,  as  it  became  to 
them  a  more  permanent  place  of  residence, 
demands  more  particular  mention. 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


•  CHAPTER  III. 

The  House  in  the  Impasse  des  Feuillnntines.— The  Garden.— Victor  Hugo's  own  Reminiscences.—  Maternal 
Instruction.— Portrait  of  Madame  Hugo.— Obedience  Enforced  upon  the  Children.— The  School  and  the 

Citl-de-sac.  —  General  Lahorie.  —  His  Commentary  on  Tacitus His  Arrest  and  Execution.  —  Departure 

for  Spain. 


AT  the  end  of  a  kind  of  cul-de-sac  called 
the  Impasse  des  Feuillantines  stood  No.  12, 
the  house  to  which  reference  has  just  been 
made.  In  his  own  writings  Victor  Hugo 
has  several  times  referred  to  the  place  in 
terms  that  we  shall  presently  quote;  but  he 
has  also  given  the  writer  of  the  present  bi- 
ography a  verbal  description  of  some  of  the 
leading  features  of  the  dwelling  where  he 
passed  a  certain  period  of  his  early  years. 
He  can  still  picture  the  handsome  grilled 
gateway  that  had  to  be  passed  before  enter- 
ing the  court-yard  leading  to  the  front  door. 
On  the  right  hand  of  the  door,  and  on  the 
same  level,  was  an  apartment  that  served  as 
a  play-room  in  rainy  weather.  Immediately 
facing  the  door  was  a  short  staircase  that  led 
up  to  the  salon,  through  which,  on  the  left, 
there  was  access  to  Madame  Hugo's  own 
room,  which,  in  its  turn,  opened  into  anoth- 
er room  assigned  to  the  children.  By  the 
side  of  these  were  two  more  apartments,  one 
of  them  the  dining-room,  the  other  reserved 
as  a  spare  bedroom. 

The  salon  was  both  spacious  and  lofty. 
At  the  farther  end  of  it  was  a  flight  of  steps 
leading  down  to  the  garden.  Beneath  the 
windows  were  beds  of  the  flowers  to  which 
Madame  Hugo  was  partial,  and  to  the  left 
of  the  flower-beds  was  a  piece  of  waste 
land,  full  of  holes  and  excavations,  in  the 
middle  of  which  was  a  puisard,  a  kind  of 
shallow  basin,  but  not  containing  any  wa- 
ter. Here  young  Victor  daily  set  snares, 
each  in  its  turn  more  ingenious  than  the 
last,  to  catch  a  salamander,  that  marvellous 
creature  that,  exists  only  in  juvenile  imagi- 
nations. 

At  a  little  distance  farther  on,  shadowed 
by  spreading  trees,  was  a  long  walk  leading 
to  a  patch  of  wood,  the  remains  of  a  park 
once  attached  to  the  ancient  convent  of  the 
Feuillantines,  and  quite  at  the  extreme  was 
a  ruined  chapel,  and  under  the  chestnut-trees 
hung  a  swing.  Almost  close  to  the  front 


door  of  the  house,  on  the  left,  was  a  narrow 
passage  reserved  for  the  gardener's  use. 
The  poet  has  thus  immortalized  the  scene: 

"Large  was  the  garden,  weird  its  pathways  all, 
Prom  curious  eyes  concealed  by  upreared  wall : 
The  flowers,  like  opening  eyelids,  peered  around, 
Vermillion  insects  paced  the  stony  ground. 
Mysterious  bu/ziugs  filled  the  sultry  air; 
Here  a  mere  field,  a  sombre  thicket  there." 

Again,  as  late  as  1875,  Victor  Hugo  wrote 
some  additional  touching  reminiscences  of 
his  early  years : 

"At  the  beginning  of  this  century,  in  the 
most  deserted  quarter  of  Paris,  in  a  large 
house,  surrounded  and  shut  in  by  a  spacious 
garden,  dwelt  a  little  child.  The  house,  be- 
fore the  Revolution,  had  been  called  the  Con- 
vent of  the  Feuillantines.  With  that  child' 
lived  his  mother  and  two  brothers.  Anoth- 
er resident  in  that  household  was  an  aged 
priest,  formerly  a  member  of  the  Oratory, 
still  smarting  from  the  persecutions  of  '93, 
but  now  a  kind  and  indulgent  tutor,  from 
whom  the  boys  learned  a  good  deal  of  Latin, 
a  smattering  of  Greek,  but  the  barest  out- 
lines of  history.  Concealed  by  the  wide- 
branching  trees  at  the  end  of  the  garden 
stood  a  ruined  chapel,  to  which  the  children 
were  forbidden  to  go.  House,  chapel,  trees, 
have  now  all  disappeared.  The  embellish- 
ments so  profusely  added  to  the  garden  of 
the  Luxembourg  have  been  extended  to  the 
Val  de  Grace,  demolishing  our  humble  oasis 
in  their  progress.  A  new  street,  equally 
grand  and  useless,  now  passes  over  its  site, 
and  of  the  venerable  Convent  of  the  Feuil- 
lantines no  vestige  remains  beyond  a  plot  of 
grass  and  the  fragment  of  an  ancient  wall 
visible  between  the  walls  of  two  pretentious 
modern  buildings — a  mere  fragment,  not 
worth  the  trouble  of  glancing  at,  except 
with  the  eye  that  recognizes  it  as  a  souvenir 
of  the  past.  In  January,  1871,  there  was  a 
continuation  of  the  work  of  embellishment; 
a  Prussian  bomb  made  choice  of  this  partic- 


THE  GARDEN  OF  THE  FEUILLANTINE8. 
3 


34 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


ular  spot  for  its  descent,  so  that  Bismarck 
completed  what  Haussmann  bad  begun. 

"Here,  in  tbe  time  of  tbe  first  Empire, 
grew  up  the  three  brothers.  Together  in 
their  work  and  in  their  play,  rough-hewing 
their  lives  regardless  of  destiny,  they  passed 
their  time  as  children  of  the  spring,  mindful 
only  of  their  books,  of  the  trees,  and  of  the 
clouds,  listening  to  the  tumultuous  chorus  : 
of  the  birds,  but  watched  over  incessantly  by 
one  sweet  and  loving  smile.  Blessings  on 
thee,  O  my  mother! 

"  Upon  the  walls,  half  hidden  among  the 
cankered  and  unnailed  espaliers,  every  here 
and  there,  were  niches  for  Madonnas  and 
fragments  of  crucifixes,  while  occasionally  a 
notice-board  might  be  observed  bearing  the 
inscription  '  National  Property. ' 

"To  the  youngest  of  those  three  broth- 
ers the  house  of  the  Feuillantines  is  now  a 
dear  and  hallowed  memory.  For  him  it  is 
invested  with  a  kind  of  glamour.  There, 
amid  sunshine  and  roses,  was  mysteriously 
wrought  the  development  of  his  soul.  Noth- 
ing could  be  more  peaceful  than  that  old  ruin, 
covered  with  the  beauty  of  flowers;  once  a 
convent,  now  a  solitude,  ever  an  asylum; 
and  yet  the  tumult  of  the  Empire  awakened 
an  echo  even  there.  Within  those  spacious 
abbey  chambers,  amid  those  monastery  ruins, 
beneath  those  dismantled  cloister  vaults,  in 
the  interval  between  two  wars,  the  sound  of 
which  had  reached  his  ears,  the  child  beheld 
the  arrival  from  the  army,  and  the  return  to 
the  army  again,  of  two  soldiers  —  a  young 
general  and  a  colonel,  his  father  and  his  un- 
cle. The  excitement  of  the  paternal  home- 
coming had  a  charm  that  was  merely  mo- 
mentary: a  trumpet-call,  and  all  at  once  the 
apparition  of  plumes  and  sabres  vanished 
away,  and  again  there  was  silence  and  soli- 
tude in  the  lonely  ruin. 

"And  thus,  already  thoughtful,  sixty  years 
ago  I  lived  a  child !  Only  with  deep  emotion 
can  I  recall  those  days. 

.My  life  glided  on  amid  the  flowers.  In 
the  garden  of  the  Feuillantines  I  rambled  as 
a  child,  I  wandered  as  a  youth,  watching  but- 
terflies, culling  buttercups,  seeing  no  one  but 
my  mother  and  my  two  brothers  and  the  good 
old  priest  who  perambulated  the  place,  his 
book  continually  beneath  his  arm. 

"Occasionally  I  would  venture  through 
the  garden  to  the  gloomy  thicket  at  the  end : 
in  its  dim  recesses  there  would  seem  no  mo- 
tion but  the  winds;  the  solitary  sound  came 
from  the  birds'  nests;  no  life  was  manifest 


except  in  the  trees.  Gazing  through  the 
branches,  I  could  espy  the  crumbling  fabric 
of  the  ancient  chapel,  and  the  shattered  panes 
enabled  me  to  perceive  the  sea-shells  fantasti 
cally  embedded  on  the  inner  wall.  The  birds 
Hew  in  and  out  of  the  unprotected  windows; 
for  the  birds  the  ruin  was  a  home.  God  and 
the  birds  were  there  together." 

Such  are  Victor  Hugo's  own  reflections. 

Madame  Hugo  lived  a  most  retired  life, 
entertaining  none  but  a  few  intimate  friends, 
and  devoting  herself  to  her  children.  Strict 
yet  tender,  grave  yet  gentle,  conscientious, 
well  informed,  vigilant,  and  thoroughly  im- 
pressed with  the  importance  of  her  maternal 
duties,  she  was  a  woman  of  superior  intel- 
lect, having,  however,  much  of  that  mascu- 
line disposition  which  Plato  would  have  de- 
scribed as  "royal."  She  fulfilled  her  mis- 
sion nobly.  Tenderness,  not  unaccompanied 
by  reserve,  discipline  that  was  systematic 
and  not  to  be  disputed,  the  slightest  of  all 
approaches  to  familiarity,  and  grave  dis- 
courses replete  with  instruction,  were  the 
principal  features  of  the  training  which  her 
deep  affection  prompted  her  to  bestow  upon 
her  children  in  general — upon  Victor  in  par- 
ticular. Altogether,  her  teaching  was  vigor- 
ous and  wholesome,  without  a  touch  of  mys- 
ticism or  of  doubt,  and  she  did  her  part  to 
make  her  sons  worthy  of  the  name  of  men. 
Happy  are  those  who  are  nurtured  with  such 
devotion;  the  remembrance  of  its  example 
becomes  an  abiding  safeguard ! 

Every  word  of  Madame  Hugo's  was  listen- 
ed to  with  respect,  and  every  direction  obeyed 
without  a  murmur.  Though  there  were  many 
fruit-trees  in  the  garden,  the  boys  were  for- 
bidden to  touch  the  fruit. 

"But  what  if  it  falls?"  asked  Victor. 

"Leave  it  on  the  ground." 

"  And  what  if  it  is  getting  rotten?" 

"Let  it  get  rotten." 

And,  as  far  as  the  children  were  concern- 
ed, the  fruit  on  the  ground  would  lie  and 
rot. 

The  owner  of  Madame  Hugo's  house  was 
Lalande,  the  astronomer.  He  lived  next 
door,  and  his  garden  was  separated  from 
that  of  the  Feuillantines  only  by  some  light 
trellis-work.  Fearing  that  he  should  be  an- 
noyed by  the  children,  he  proposed  to  put 
up  a  more  substantial  partition. 

"  You  need  not  be  afraid,"  said  the  moth- 
er; "my  boys  will  not  trespass  upon  your 
property.  I  have  forbidden  them." 

No  barrier  of  any  kind  was  erected,  yet 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS  TIME. 


35 


neither  of  the  three  brothers  was  ever  known 
to  set  foot  upon  the  landlord's  ground. 

At  the  beginning  of  their  residence  in  the 
Feuillantines,  and  before  the  arrival  of  Gen- 
eral Lahorie,  Abel,  the  eldest  boy,  was  placed 
at  college,  the  other  two,  up  to  the  time  of 
their  departure  to  Spain,  going  daily  to  a 
school  in  the  Rue  Saint  Jacques,  where  a 
worthy  man,  le  Pere  Lariviere,  who,  in  spite 
of  his  humble  circumstances,  was  well  in- 
formed, instructed  the  young  people  of  the 
neighborhood  in  reading,  writing,  and  ele- 
mentary arithmetic. 

Every  time  the  two  children  returned  from 
school  they  had  to  pass  through  groups  of 
street -boys  that  were  always  playing  in 
the  cul-de-sac.  These  were  chiefly  the  sons 
of  the  cotton-workers,  who  were  very  numer- 
ous in  the  neighborhood,  as  there  was  a  fac- 
tory close  by,  just  opposite  the  Deaf  and 
Dumb  Asylum.  No  doubt  both  Victor  and 
his  brother,  left  to  themselves,  would  have 
been  ready  enough  to  accept  the  invitation 
to  join  in  the  open-air  sports ;  but  their  moth- 
er had  forbidden  it,  and  accordingly  it  was 
not  to  be  thought  of  for  an  instant.  It 
was  not  without  an  effort  that  young  Victor 
turned  his  eye  away  from  the  games  that 
were  going  on,  and  fixed  it  resolutely  on 
the  great  blank  wall  on  the  other  side  that 
extended  half-way  along  the  Impasse  of  the 
Feuillantines,  being  the  side  of  an  old  ec- 
clesiastical structure  of  the  seventeenth  cen- 
tury. 

Regularly  at  the  same  time,  day  after  day, 
an  old  woman  used  to  pass  along  the  street 
carrying  brooms  for  sale,  and  Victor  Hugo 
can  still  distinctly  call  to  mind  the  melan- 
choly tone  with  which  she  repeated  her  cry, 
' '  Brooms !  birch  brooms !  who'll  buy  my 
birch  brooms?" 

Many  similar  circumstances  of  this  time 
are  plainly  impressed  upon  his  memory,  and 
he  recollects  how  he  learned  his  letters  all 
alone  by  looking  at  them,  and,  having  ac- 
quired the  knowledge  of  their  form,  how 
quickly  he  learned  to  spell. 

One  remarkable  incident,  not  likely  to  be 
ever  forgotten,  was  associated  with  this  peri- 
od of  convent-like  existence.  Long  ago  Vic- 
tor Hugo  promised  to  communicate  its  de- 
tails, and  he  has  been  as  good  as  his  word. 
His  godfather,  General  Lahorie,  who  had 
been  implicated  in  Moreau's  affair  in  1804, 
had  contrived  to  elude  pursuit  by  taking  ref- 
uge with  a  friend.  There  he  fell  ill,  but  his 
sense  of  honor  would  not  allow  him  to  be  an 


object  of  danger  to  his  benefactor.      Having 
on  one  occasion  caught  sight  of  an  expres- 
I  sion  of  alarm  on  the  countenance  of  his  host, 
he  felt  so  convinced  that  his  fever  would 
only  be  aggravated  by  the  feeling  that  he 
was  compromising  the  safety  of  his  friend, 
that  he  insisted  on  being  removed  in  a  litter 
that  very  day,  and  was  carried  to  the  house 
in  the  Rue  de  Clichy  where  Madame  Hugo 
was  residing.     With  her  characteristic  fear- 
lessness and  generosity,  she  at  once  admitted 
I  the  friend  of  her  youth ;  but  he  was  so  agi- 
i  tated  by  the  fear  of  exposing  her  and  her 
I  children   to   any  risk   that   at   the   end   of 
three  days,  when  his  fever  had  abated,  he 
j  sought  another  retreat.     In  1809,  however, 
;  worn  out  with  adventures,  weary  of  being 
pursued,  and  having  been  driven  to  every 
stratagem  of  disguise,  he  once  again  pre- 
'  sented  himself  at  the  door  of  Madame  Hugo, 
I  now  settled  in  the  Impasse  of  the  Feuillan- 
!  tines. 

Here  for  a  while  he  found  a  secure  refuge ; 

j  the  seclusion  was  complete,  and  during  two 

j  years  he  continued  to  reside  in  the  place. 

What  he  was,  and  how  he  lived  throughout 

that  period,  may  be  described  in  the  words 

of  his  illustrious  godson: 

"  Victor  Fanneau  de  Lahorie  was  a  gentle- 
man of  Brittany  who  had  thrown  in  his  lot 
with  the  Republic.  He  was  a  friend  of  Mo- 
reau,  who  was  a  Breton  like  himself.  In  La 
Vendee,  Lahorie  made  acquaintance  with 
my  father,  his  junior  by  five -and -twenty 
years.  Subsequently  they  were  brothers-in- 
arms in  the  army  of  the  Rhine,  and  their 
friendship  became  of  that  intimate  nature 
that  one  would  well-nigh  have  been  ready  to 
die  to  save  the  other.  In  1801,  Lahorie  was 
implicated  in  Moreau's  plot  against  Bona- 
parte. A  price  was  set  upon  his  head.  No 
place  of  asylum  was  to  be  found,  when  my 
father's  doors  were  opened  to  him,  and  the 
ruined  chapel  of  the  Feuillantines  was  pro- 
posed as  a  safe  retreat  for  the  ruined  man. 
The  offer  was  accepted  as  simply  as  it  was 
made,  and  there,  in  the  shadow  of  obscurity, 
the  refugee  passed  his  time. 

' '  None  but  my  father  and  mother  knew 
precisely  who  he  was.  To  us  children  his 
arrival  was  a  mysterious  surprise ;  but  to  the 
old  pfire,  who  had  experienced  proscription 
enough  during  his  life  to  take  away  aston- 
ishment at  anything,  a  refugee  was  merely 
a  sign  of  the  times,  and  to  be  lurking  in  a 
hiding-place  was  a  matter  of  course. 

"My  mother  enjoined  upon  us  boys  a  si- 


VICTOR  lll'QO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


lenre  which  we  most  scrupulously  kept,  and 
after  a  short  time  the  stranger  ceased  to  l>e  a 
mystery,  for  what  satisfaction  could  there  be 
in  making  a  mystery  about  an  ordinary  mem 
bcr  of  a  household?  He  soon  began  to  share 
the  family  meals;  he  walked  about  the  gar- 
den, sometimes  handling  a  spade  to  help  the 


tin-  air,  he  would  suddenly  1  't  me  descend  to 
within  a  little  of  the  ground. 

"Of  his  real  name  I  was  in  ignorance.  My 
mother  always  called  him  the  general :  to  me 
he  was  my  godfather. 

"  Continuing  to  occupy  the  ruin  at  the 
bottom  of  the  garden,  he  bivouacked  there, 


GENERAL   LAHORIE. 


gardener ;  he  gave  us  good  advice,  and  oc- 
casionally supplemented  the  lessons  of  our 
tutor  with  lectures  of  his  own.  He  had  a 
way  of  lifting  me  in  his  arms  that  amused 
me,  while  it  caused  me  some  sensation  of 
alarm;  after  having  raised  me  up  high  in 


regardless  of  the  rain  and  snow  that  in  win- 
ter were  driven  in  through  the  paueless  win- 
dow-frames. His  camp-bed  was  under  the 
shelter  of  the  altar,  and  in  a  corner  were  his 
pistols,  and  a  Tacitus,  which  he  used  to  like 
to  explain  to  me. 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


"  'Child,'  he  would  say  to  me,  while  ex- 
patiating on  the  Roman  Republic — '  child, 
everything  must  yield  to  liberty.'  " 

In  this  way  has  the  poet  sketched  one  great 
figure  that  never  disappeared  from  his  hori- 
zon, and  of  which  distance  only  magnified 
the  proportions.  Thanks  to  his  teacher,  he 
disdained  the  dead  level  of  the  university, 
and  rose  to  a  free  method  of  his  own! 

As  the  result  of  an  odious  machination, 
Lahorie  was  discovered  and  arrested  at  the 
Feuillantines  in  1811,  and  was  cast  into  a 
prison,  which  he  left  only  to  die. 

Subsequently  to  the  journey  to  Spain,  which 
we  are  about  to  describe,  and  when  Madame 
Hugo  had  returned  to  the  Feuillantines  with 
her  two  youngest  children,  she  was  one  even- 
ing walking  past  the  Church  of  St.  Jacques 
du  Haut  Pas.  Victor's  hand  was  in  his  moth- 
er's, when  she  paused,  her  eye  being  attracted 
by  a  great  white  placard  posted  against  one 
of  the  pillars.  The  passers-by  seemed  to 
throw  but  a  hurried  and  unwilling  glance 
upon  it,  and  to  hasten  on  their  way.  Madame 
Hugo,  pointing  to  the  placard  with  her  fin- 
ger, said  to  Victor: 

"Read  that!" 

The  child  repeated  aloud,  ' '  Empire  Fran- 


9ais !  By  sentence  of  court-martial,  for  con- 
spiracy against  the  Empire  and  the  Emperor, 
the  three  ex-generals  Malet,  Guidal,  and  La- 
horie have  been  shot  on  the  plain  of  Gre- 
nelle. " 

This  was  the  way  in  which  Victor  Hugo 
first  became  acquainted  with  his  godfather's 
name,  and  it  may  readily  be  imagined  how 
bitter  and  how  lasting  was  the  impression 
made  by  the  execution  on  the  ardent  mind 
of  the  child. 

While  Lahorie  was  reaping  the  reward  of 
his  high  principles  in  the  dungeon  of  La 
Force,  his  two  young  friends  received  a  visit 
from  their  uncle,  General  Louis  Hugo,  who 
came  on  behalf  of  his  brother  to  accelerate 
the  departure  of  his  family  to  Spain,  where 
the  government  of  the  new  king  seemed  to 
be  establishing  its  hold. 

Madame  Hugo  told  her  children  that  they 
would  have  to  know  Spanish  in  three  months' 
time.  They  could  speak  it  at  the  end  of  six 
weeks. 

The  day  before  they  started,  Paris  was  gay 
with  illuminations  in  honor  of  the  birth  of 
the  King  of  Rome,  and  this  was  Victor  Hugo's 
last  vision  of  the  city  before  his  departure 
for  Madrid. 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

From  Paris  to  Baynnne.— A  Childish  Attachment.—  Prom  Bnyonne  to  Madrid.— The  Treasure  and  Its  Con- 
voy.— Arrival  iu  Madrid.— Residence  in  the  Mnsserano  Palace.  —  The  College  nf  Noble*. — Schoolboy 
Fighti?.— Retnrn  to  the  Fenillantine*.— Larivi6reV  Teaching.— Dangers  of  Clerical  Education.— A  Head- 
master "Bald  and  Black."— Pepita,  the  Little  Spanish  Girl. 


A  JOURNEY  to  Madrid  at  that  date  was  an 
enterprise  attended  by  no  inconsiderable  dan- 
ger. First  of  all,  there  was  the  entire  transit 
of  France  from  Paris  to  Bayonne,  which, 
though  now  to  be  accomplished  in  a  com- 
paratively few  hours,  in  1811  occupied  about 
nine  days.  Madame  Hugo  engaged  the  whole 
of  the  diligence,  which,  like  all  those  of  the 
period,  was  painted  green,  the  imperial  color, 
and  held  six  passengers  inside  and  three  in 
the  coupe  in  front. 

Victor  begged  to  be  allowed  to  make  the 
journey  in  the  coupe,  and  from  Poitiers  he 
had  the  company  of  two  strangers,  who, 
having  represented  that  they  were  urgently 
pressed  for  time,  were  permitted  to  have 
seats.  One  of  them,  named  Isnel,  through 
his  kind  and  flattering  attentions  left  a 
lasting  impression  upon  the  poet's  mem- 
ory. 

On  reaching  Bayonne  the  travellers  were 
informed  that  they  must  wait  there  a  month 
until  the  arrival  of  what  was  called  "the 
convoy,"  being  the  treasure  for  King  Joseph 
that  had  to  be  conveyed  through  Spain  under 
the  protection  of  a  large  escort. 

That  stay  at  Bayonne  Victor  Hugo  has  never 
forgotten.  He  still  remembers  the  theatre  to 
which  his  mother  took  him  to  see  the  same 
piece  several  times  over. 

Bayonne,  too,  was  the  scene  of  Victor's 
first  romance  hi  life,  as  he  here  met  with  a 
little  girl  with  whom  he  fell  deeply  in  love, 
and  was  absorbed  for  the  moment  in  his  pas- 
sion; but  he  had  quickly  to  part  from  the 
little  maiden  who  had  inspired  it,  never  to 
see  her  iigain. 

In  due  time  the  start  was  made  for  Madrid. 
As  Madame  Victor  Hugo  has  recounted  the 
principal  details  of  the  long  journey,  it  will 
be  needful  only  to  insert  a  few  particulars  to 
which  she  has  not  referred. 

Although  Joseph  Bonaparte  had  been  pro- 
claimed King  of  Spain.his  authority  was  prac- 
tically limited  to  Madrid  and  to  the  places 
occupied  by  the  French  army.  All  the  rest 


of  the  country  was  in  a  state  of  revolt;  and 
though  the  passage  of  an  army  corps  might 
occasionally  make  a  gap  in  the  insurrection, 
the  anarchy  would  immediately  again  break 
out  in  the  rear. 

To  levy  any  contributions  was  an  utter  im- 
possibility. Joseph  might  declare  him.-rlt' 
King  of  Spain  and  of  the  Indies,  though  in 
fact  he  had  no  possession  of  either  the  one 
or  the  other;  but  not  simply  would  he  have 
been  unable  to  maintain  the  dignity  of  a 
court,  he  would  literally  have  died  of  starva- 
tion at  Madrid,  if  Napoleon  had  not  regular- 
ly sent  him  his  quarterly  stipend  as  a  pre- 
fect of  the  Empire. 

The  sum  allotted  every  year  to  a  prefect 
was  48,000,000  francs  ;  consequently  every 
three  months  there  was  an  instalment  of 
12,000,000  francs  to  be  forwarded  to  Spain. 
This  was  known  as  "  le  tresor,"  and  was 
most  eagerly  coveted  by  the  Spanish  gueril- 
leros,  who  more  than  once  succeeded  in  capt- 
uring it,  in  spite  of  the  strong  escort  that  was 
sent  to  protect  it  on  its  transit. 

Travellers  on  their  way  to  Madrid  were 
glad  to  make  their  journey  under  the  pro- 
tection of  these  royal  convoys. 

Before  leaving  Bayonne,  Madame  Hugo, 
to  enable  her  to  travel  with  this  safeguard, 
had  purchased  the  only  vehicle  that  was  to 
be  obtained.  It  was  one  of  those  great  lum- 
bering carriages  that  are  now  to  be  seen  only 
in  Piranesi's  drawings,  or  perchance  at  some 
pontifical  fete  in  the  streets  of  Rome.  It  may 
be  described  as  a  huge  box,  slung  between 
two  shafts  by  means  of  enormous  braces, 
the  steps  being  placed  in  such  a  way  that,  in 
order  to  get  inside,  the  traveller  has  to  climb 
right  over  the  shaft.  It  had,  however,  one 
advantage;  its  sides  were  ball-proof,  not  to 
be  penetrated  by  bullets  or  ordinary  grape- 
shot;  consequently,  on  an  emergency.it  might 
be  converted  into  a  fortress. 

Following  behind  the  treasure  came  a  line 
of  nearly  three  hundred  vehicles,  some  drawn 
by  four  mules, others  by  six;  altogether  form 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS  TIME. 


39 


ing  a  cavalcade  more  than  two  miles  in  length. 
Madame  Hugo's  carriage  was  at  the  head  of 
all  the  rest,  immediately  in  the  rear  of  the 
treasure,  which  was  guarded  by  five  hundred 
men  with  their  muskets  loaded.  A  file  of 
soldiers  kept  the  line,  and  five  hundred  more, 
with  a  large  cannon,  completed  the  proces- 
sion, which,  as  Alexandre  Dumas  expresses 


an  indelible  impression  upon  the  mind  of  the 
child,  who  afterwards  depicted  his  experi- 
ence in  such  vivid  colors : 

"  Before  my  wondering  eye  did  Spain  unfold 
Her  prisons,  convents,  structures  new  and  old; 
Grand  Burgos'  minster  reared  in  Gothic  style, 
Irun's  strange  roofs, Vittoria's  lofty  pile ; 
Nor  were  thy  courts,  Valladolid,  forgot 
Where  ancient  chain*  in  pride  were  left  to  rot  I" 


THE  JOUKNEY  TO  SPAIN. 


it,  moved  forward  "like  a  great  reptile  that 
could  bite  with  its  head,  and  sting  with  its 
tail."* 

After  a  wearisome  journey  lasting  nearly 
three  months,  and  marked  by  diversified  in- 
cidents, the  convoy  reached  Madrid  in  June, 
1811.  The  slow  progress  through  Spain  made 


1  Alexandre  Dumas'  "Memoires.1 


Madame  Hugo's  husband  was  absent  from 
Madrid  when  she  arrived.  He  had  risen  to 
the  rank  of  general  with  the  title  of  count, 
and  had  been  made  majordomo  of  the  palace 
and  governor  of  two  provinces.  He  had  just 
left  the  capital  for  his  government  of  Guada- 
lajara, and  was  now  carrying  on  the  same 
species  of  warfare  against  Juan  Martin,  known 
as  the  "  Empecinado,"  on  the  banks  of  the 


40 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIJS   T1.MK. 


Tagus,  as  he  had  waged  against  Chan-it  e  in 
La  Vendee  and  against  Fra  Diavolo  in  Ca- 
labria. He  has  himself  modestly  related  the 
strategy  of  the  expedition  which  ended  suc- 
cessfully in  the  capture  and  execution  of  the 
guerilla  chief. 

The  general's  family  took  up  their  resi- 
dence in  the  quarters  prepared  for  them  iu 
the  Masserano  palace,  a  handsome  building 
of  the  seventeenth  century,  furnished  mag- 
nificently, but  in  which  the  foreign  guests 
were  kept  fully  alive  to  the  hatred  which  the 
Spaniards  bore  their  conquerors.  Through- 
out the  country  Napoleon  was  universally 
spoken  of  as  Napo-ladron — Napo  the  robber. 

The  gilding  of  the  palace,  the  sculpture, 
the  splendid  specimens  of  Bohemian  glass, 
all  took  a  lively  hold  of  young  Victor's  im- 
agination; and  the  verses  in  which  he  subse- 
quently recounted  their  magnificence  may 
occur  to  the  minds  of  many. 

Not  for  long,  however,  did  the  children 
enjoy  their  sumptuous  home.  When  their 
father  came  back,  he  entered  Abel, the  eldest, 
as  one  of  King  Joseph's  pages;  and  as  he  con- 
templated doing  the  same  with  the  two  oth- 
ers, he  soon  sent  them  to  the  "  seminaire  des 
nobles  "  along  with  the  sons  of  some  of  the 
Spanish  gentry.  The  school  is  now  a  hospital. 

EugSne  and  Victor  were  intensely  bored 
while  at  this  seminary,  learning  next  to  noth- 
ing. Boys  older  than  themselves  were  in  the 
merest  rudiments  of  Latin,  and  they  were, 
moreover,  under  the  superintendence  of  a 
hypocritical .  monk  whose  mode  of  dealing 
with  them  was  in  the  highest  degree  irritating. 

The  only  breaks  in  the  monotony  of  that 
year  of  imprisonment  were  some  schoolboy 
fights.  The  young  Spaniards  hated  the  young 
Frenchmen.and  there  ensued, in  consequence, 
several  small  duels,  in  one  of  which  Eugene 
received  a  wound  in  his  face.  Somewhere 
in  his  writings,  the  poet  alludes  to  these 
childish  fights  for  "  the  Great  Emperor;"  and 
years  afterwards,  in  mentioning  them  to  a 
friend,  he  observed : 

' '  But  the  Spaniards  were  in  the  right.  They 
were  contending  for  their  country.  Children, 
however,  do  not  understand  these  things." 

At  the  end  of  1812  and  the  beginning  of 
the  following  year,  affairs  assumed  a  threat- 
ening aspect.  As  a  result  of  the  disasters  in 
Russia,  the  thrones  erected  in  the  various  Eu- 
ropean capitals  began  to  totter  to  their  fall. 

It  was  deemed  prudent  for  Madame  Hugo 
to  quit  Madrid.  Her  eldest  son,  now  a  sub- 
lieutenant, remained  behind  with  the  general ; 


YOUNG  PATRIOTS. 

but  the  two  schoolboys,  delighted  to  regain 
their  liberty,  accompanied  their  mother  to 
Paris,  and,  after  another  journey  similar  to  the 
last,  they  all  took  up  their  abode  in  their  old 
quarters  in  the  Rue  des  Feuillantines,  which 
they  had  retained  throughout  their  absence. 

Everything  was  as  they  had  left  it;  the 
same  lights  and  shadows  rested  on  the  home, 
and  the  flowers  were  opening  to  the  sun- 
beams. Good  old  Lariviere,  in  his  long 
frock-coat,  came  just  as  before  to  give  the 
young  lads  their  daily  lessons. 

Of  Larivi£re  wrote  Victor  Hugo,  years  after : 

"  His  was  a  name  that  should  ever  be  men- 
tioned with  respect.  That  a  child  has  re- 
ceived his  education  from  a  priest  is  a  cir- 
cumstance to  be  taken  into  account  with 
much  consideration;  it  is  an  accident  over 
which  neither  the  priest  nor  the  child  has 
any  control ;  nevertheless,  it  is  an  unhealthy 
union  of  two  intellects,  one  of  them  unde- 
veloped, the  other  shrunken;  the  one  expand- 
ing, the  other  getting  cramped  by  age.  On 
the  whole,  the  advantage  would  seem  to  be 
on  the  side  of  old-age.  In  time,  the  mind  of 
a  child  can  free  itself  from  the  errors  that  it 
has  contracted  from  that  of  an  elderly  man. 

' '  The  melancholy  part  of  instruction  so 
derived  is  that  all  it  does  for  the  child  is  for 
the  child's  disadvantage;  slowly  and  inap- 
preciably it  gives  its  turn  to  the  intellect;  it 
is  orthopedy  inverted ;  it  makes  crooked 
what  nature  has  made  straight,  and  ultimate- 
ly produces  as  its  masterpieces  distorted  souls 
like  Torquemada,  unintelligent  intelligences 
like  Joseph  de  Maistre,  and  other  victims  of 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


41 


the  system,  who  in  their  turn  become  its  ad- 
vocates and  exponents.  Teaching  of  this 
character  can  hardly  fail  to  inoculate  young 
intellects  with  the  prejudices  of  old-age." 

Certain  it  is  that  the  brains  of  children  im- 
bibe the  ideas  of  those  that  bring  them  up. 
Parents  and  tutors  have  a  fertile  soil  wherein 
to  sow  the  seeds  of  prejudice,  which,  devel- 


Any  dangerous  tendency  of  the  teaching 
of  Pere  LariviSre  was  happily  counteracted 
by  the  gentle  and  loving  good-sense  of  the 
mother.  The  basis  of  her  teaching,  as  one 
of  her  contemporaries  has  remarked,  was 
Voltairianism;  but,  with  a  woman's  positiv- 
ism, she  did  not  concern  herself  to  instil  into 
her  sons  the  doctrines  of  any  special  creed. 


TUTOR  AND  PUPIL. 


oped  by  education  and  matured  by  love,  be- 
come the  giant  plants  of  which  the  man,  full- 
grown  and  reasonable,  will  have  unbounded 
trouble  to  dislodge  the  roots. 

' '  To  break  away  from  one's  education  is 
not  an  easy  task;  that  a  clerical  training, 
however,,  is  not  always  irremediable  is  proved 
by  the  case  of  Voltaire." 


Besides  a  practical  knowledge  of  the  noble 
language,  and  the  attainment  of  its  genuine 
guttural  accent,  both  the  boys,  but  particu- 
larly Victor,  had  acquired  in  Spain  something 
of  the  Castilian  bearing,  a  certain  gravity  of 
deportment,  a  stability  of  mind,  and  a  firm- 
ness of  sentiment  that  boded  well  for  future 
greatness.  The  sun  of  the  Sierra  had  bronzed 


42 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS  TIME. 


their  characters  and   gilded  their  imagina- 
tion. 

Not  content  with  tending  the  mental  and 
moral  education  of  her  children,  Madame 
Hugo  took  much  pains  to  develop  their  mus- 
cular powers,  insisting  upon  their  doing  a 
certain  amount  of  gardening  work  in  spite  of 
its  being  by  no  means  to  their  taste.  But, 
while  they  were  thus  rejoicing  in  their  com- 
parative freedom  from  restraint,  they  were 
alarmed  at  the  prospect  of  being  again  im- 
mured within  the  restraint  of  a  college.  This 


At  dingy  desks  they  toil  by  day ;  at  night 
To  gloomy  chambers  go  uucheered  by  light, 
Where  pillars  rudely  graved  by  rusty  nail 
Of  enuui'd  hours  reveal  the  weary  tale: 
Where  spiteful  nshers  grin,  all  pleuned  to  make 
The  scribbled  lines  the  price  of  each  mistake. 
By  fonr  nnpitying  walls  environed  there, 
The  homesick  students  pace  the  pavement  bare." 

On  the  other  hand,  the  sweetness  of  the 
flowers,  the  chestnuts,  and  the  breezes,  all 
seemed  to  plead  with  the  mother,  and  to 
whisper  in  her  ears  the  entreaty  "Leave  us 
the  children,"  so  that  she  finally  decided  on 


RECREATION. 


attempt  upon  their  liberty  was  made  by  the 
representations  of  the  head -master  of  the 
Lycee  Napoleon,  whom  twenty  -  six  years 
later  the  poet  stigmatized  in  ' '  Les  Rayons  et 
les  Ombres  "  as  the  "  terrible  man  bald  and 
black,"  who  held  it  necessary  to  shut  up 
young  people  in  order  to  make  them  work. 
He  seemed  inclined  to  believe  that  it  was 

"Good  for  the  young  to  leave  maternal  care, 
And  for  a  while  a  harsher  yoke  to  bear ; 
Surrender  all  the  careless  ease  of  home, 
And  be  forbid  from  school-yard  bounds  to  roam  ; 
For  this  with  blandest  smiles  he  softly  asks 
That  they  with  him  will  prosecute  their  tasks ; 
Receive*  them  in  his  solemn  afminaire, 
The  rigid  lot  of  discipline  to  share. 


keeping  her  sons  at  home.  But  she  never 
allowed  them  to  be  idle ;  she  had  them  taught 
to  use  their  hands,  and  they  learned  to  do 
some  carpentering  and  to  paper  their  own 
rooms.  Literature  is  a  pursuit  that  does  not 
always  enrich  her  followers,  and  many  of  her 
devotees  must  have  been  doomed  to  die  of 
hunger  unless,  upon  emergency,  they  had 
been  able  to  maintain  themselves  by  manual 
labor. 

Except  to  gardening,  Victor  had  no  dislike 
to  work,  but  seemed  ever  ready  to  put  his 
hands  to  anything.  His  recreations,  to  say 
the  truth,  were  very  few;  his  mother  saw  no 
one,  and  probably  would  not  have  cared  for 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS  TIME. 


43 


companionship.  Occasionally  a  little  girl 
of  thirteen  or  fourteen  came  to  play  in  the 
garden,  and  on  those  days  the  boy's  heart 
beat  more  rapidly  than  was  its  wont,  for  then 
commenced  his  earnest,  tender,  deep  regard 
for  the  lady  who  afterwards  became  his  wife. 
The  story  of  this  most  pure  and  exquisite 
love  has  been  related  by  Victor  Hugo  him- 
self in  the  most  thrilling  of  all  his  works, 
"Le  Dernier  Jour  d'un  Condamne."  He 
imagines  himself  in  that  book  to  be  a  child 
again.  In  depicting  the  agonies  of  a  man 
awaiting  the  guillotine,  he  has  probably  con- 
ceived what  would  have  been  his  own  best 
happiness  and  worse  regrets  if  brought,  as  he 
might  have  been,  to  a  similar  fate,  since  as 
late  as  the  year  1848  politics  have  brought 
men  to  the  scaffold  as  easily  as  crimes.  He 
makes  a  retrospect  of  the  joys  of  life,  and 
fancies  himself  once  more  a  schoolboy;  he 
recalls  the  appearance  in  the  solitary  garden 
of  the  little  Andalusian  girl,  Pepita;  he  sees 
her  in  all  her  charms,  just  fourteen  years  of 
age,  with  large  lustrous  eyes  and  luxuriant 
hair,  with  rich  gold-brown  skin  and  crimson 


lips ;  he  dwells  on  the  proud  emotion  which 
he  felt  as  she  leaned  upon  his  arm;  he  re- 
counts how  they  wandered,  talking  softly, 
along  the  shady  walks;  he  tells  how  he 
picked  up  the  handkerchief  she  had  dropped, 
and  was  conscious  of  her  hands  trembling  as 
they  touched  his  own;  and  he  recollects  how 
they  talked  about  the  birds,  the  stars,  and  the 
golden  sunset;  sometimes,  too,  about  her 
schoolfellows,  her  dresses,  and  her  ribbons; 
they  blushed  together  over  the  most  innocent 
of  thoughts. 

It  was  a  time  he  never  forgot. 

The  home  in  the  Feuillantines  holds  a 
large  place  in  his  affections,  and,  with  a  mel- 
ancholy not  unnatural,  he  has  poured  forth 
a  plaintive  lay  over  the  old  garden  that  be- 
came the  scene  of  others'  sports  and  the  shel- 
ter of  others'  loves. 

No  inconsiderable  part  of  his  youth  was 
spent  with  his  mother  and  his  tutor  beneath 
those  shady  trees  where  he  played  with  his 
young  fiancee.  She  was  the  original  of  the 
Pepita  so  tenderly  described.  Her  real  name 
was  Adele  Foucher. 


44 


VICTOR  11UOO  AND 


TIME. 


CHAPTER  V. 

The  Rue  da  Cherche-Midi.—  The  Retreat  from  Spain.— General  Hugo's  Part  therein.— Defence  of  Tliionville. 
— The  Invasion. — Return  of  the  Bourbons.—  A  King  instead  of  an  Emperor.— Free  Studies.— Madame 
Hugo  a  Royalist — Domestic  Differences. — The  Pension  Cordier.  —  Schoolboy  Tyrants. — Leon  Gatnyes 
and  the  King  of  the  "Dogs."— A  Romantic  Mathematician.— Poetical  Essays.— Theatrical  Performances.— 
Juvenile  Effusion?. 


THE  second  period  of  residence  in  the 
Feuillan tines  was  unfortunately  destined  to 
be  only  of  short  duration.  The  latter  por- 
tion of  the  time  was  very  merry.  Madame 
Hugo  had  offered  hospitality  to  the  wife  of 
General  Lucotte,  whom  she  had  known  in 
Spain,  and  who,  like  herself,  had  been  obliged 
to  come  away  with  her  children.  The 
younger  members  of  the  two  families  be- 
came inseparable  companions,  and  the  last 
games  played  in  the  old  garden  were  far 
from  being  the  least  boisterous  and  gay. 

But  the  improvement  of  Paris  now  re- 
quired the  house  of  the  Feuillantines  in  or- 
der to  lengthen  the  Rue  d'Ulm;  and  on  the 
31st  of  December,  1813,  Madame  Hugo,  with 
her  party,  moved  to  the  Rue  du  Cherche- 
Midi,  almost  opposite  the  hotel  of  the  War 
Office,  the  residence  of  M.  Foucher.  The 
11  sw  home  was  an  old  structure  of  the  Louis 
XV.  style.  According  to  her  wont,  Madame 
Hugo  took  up  her  quarters  in  rooms  on  the 
ground-floor  overlooking  the  garden,  which 
was  much  smaller  and  far  less  beautiful  than 
what  they  had  quitted.  The  boys  were 
obliged  to  sleep  on  the  second  story. 

Joyous  games  soon  began  again.  The 
young  folks  were  joined  by  Victor  Foucher 
and  other  companions  until  the  Rue  du 
Cherche-Midi  became  the  scene  of  noisy 
romps  such  as  are  the  very  terror  of  moth- 
ers. The  lads  clambered  on  to  the  roof, 
they  played  at  soldiers,  piling  up  boxes  and 
trunks  of  all  dimensions  into  barricades, 
which  were  assaulted  and  taken  only  after 
a  vigorous  interchange  of  blows. 

The  frolicsome  band  was  further  reinforced 
by  the  arrival  of  the  eldest  of  the  Hugo  boys. 
The  general  did  not  remain  in  Spain  long 
after  his  wife's  departure,  and  Abel,  after 
serving  as  his  father's  aide-de-camp  in  the 
battles  of  Salamanca  and  Vittoria,  in  the  last 
victory  and  tinal  defeat,  now  found  himself 
a  lieutenant  at  fifteen,  by  force  of  circum- 
stances unattached. 


He  had  been  sharing  in  the  terrible  contest 
in  which  France  could  not  claim  justice  on 
her  side.  In  order  to  resist  a  conqueror 
flushed  with  victory  and  inflated  with  pride 
— a  conqueror  who  shed  the  blood  of  his  sub- 
jects for  the  mere  purpose  of  subjugating  the 
powers  of  Europe  and  augmenting  his  own 
renown — who  held  the  doctrine  that  right 
may  ever  be  oppressed  by  might  —  Spain 
made  those  splendid  and  heroic  efforts  by 
which  she  maintained  her  independence.  The 
women  and  children  took  up  arms.  From 
every  bush  projected  the  muzzle  of  a  gun, 
charged  with  the  death  of  an  invader;  every 
pass  concealed  an  ambush,  every  height  was 
defended  by  a  patriot. 

It  was  a  fine  example,  and  one  that  has  sel- 
dom been  matched  for  the  self-devotion  of 
the  victims ;  yet,  magnificent  as  was  their  de- 
fence, it  did  not  deteriorate  from  the  bravery 
of  the  soldiers  of  the  first  Empire,  who  had 
no  choice  but  to  obey  their  master's  bidding. 

To  General  Hugo  it  fell  to  conduct  the  ter- 
rible retreat.  The  soldiers  under  his  com- 
mand had  to  protect  the  lives  of  twenty  thou- 
sand of  the  French  fugitives  who  were  hurry- 
ing with  their  property  from  Madrid  —  ;i 
terror-stricken  multitude  whom  the  enemy 
would  not  hesitate  to  massacre  if  only  they 
could  get  the  chance,  and  whose  ranks  mean- 
while were  being  decimated  by  poison  and 
dysentery. 

The  general,  ever  on  the  alert,  performed 
his  duty  nobly.  As  soon  as  he  had  assured 
himself  that  the  unfortunates  committed  to 
his  protection  were  in  a  position  of  safety, 
he  took  his  son  to  Paris,  and  very  shortly 
afterwards  received  orders  to  take  the  com- 
mand at  Thionville,  which  was  on  the  point 
of  being  besieged. 

He  made  a  gallant  defence  of  the  fortress, 
which  was  one  of  the  last  over  which  the 
tricolor  floated.  The  citadel  surrendered, 
not  to  the  enemy,  but  to  the  Bourbons — that 
is,  to  the  allies — and  the  French  general,  as 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


45 


the  reward  of  defending  himself  against  the 
Hessians,  found  himself  accused  of  treason 
against  those  who  then,  as. now,  styled  them- 
selves the  legitimate  sovereigns  of  France. 

Throughout  these  critical  struggles  the  chil- 
dren continued  at  their  daily  work  and  at 
their  daily  play.  Their  mother  was  anxious 
for  them  to  learn  as  much  as  possible,  and 
had  subscribed  for  Victor  to  a  reading-room. 
There  he  greedily  devoured  everything  that 
came  in  his  way — romances,  books  of  science, 
and  even  "Les  Contemporaines  "  of  Retif  de 
la  Bretonne. 

Then  came  the  invasion  reinstating  the 
monarchs  "  by  right  divine."  Even  children 
became  infected  with  the  fever  of  politics, 
and  the  youngsters  of  the  Rue  du  Cherche- 
Midi  were  fain  to  put  aside  their  picture- 
books  and  to  consult  their  atlases.  His  de- 
sire to  make  himself  acquainted  with  the 
movements  of  the  allied  forces  had  the  effect 
of  making  Victor,  who  had  all  General  Lu- 
cotte's  elaborate  collection  of  plans  at  his 
disposal,  learn  his  geography  very  thorough- 
ly and  by  a  very  practical  method. 

To  Madame  Hugo  the  fall  of  the  Empire 
was  a  satisfaction  to  which  she  did  not  hesi- 
tate to  give  expression.  Although  it  was  an 
assent  that  seriously  affected  her  husband's 
fortunes,  as  a  Vendean  she  was  so  loyally 
devoted  to  her  prince  that  all  other  interests 
were  held  to  be  secondary. 

While  with  a  terrible  crash  was  falling  the 
throne  of  the  man  who  had  squandered  the 
blood  of  France  on  a  thousand  battle-fields, 
but  who  as  the  result  of  all  his  exploits  had 
left  the  gates  of  Paris  open  to  the  armies  of 
the  foreigner,  Victor  Hugo  was  wearing  lilies 
in  his  button-hole.  His  mother  approved  of 
this ;  consequently  he  was  sure  he  was  right, 
although  he  had  no  little  difficulty  in  looking 
with  a  friendly  eye  upon  the  Cossacks  who 
encamped  with  their  horses  in  the  court-yard 
of  the  Cherche-Midi. 

In  the  view  of  a  lad  of  twelve,  it  seemed 
at  first  as  if  France  must  have  sustained  a 
humiliation  in  coming  down  from  an  emper- 
or to  a  king.  He  had  always  felt  a  certain 
amount  of  admiration  for  the  great  Bona- 
parte; but  his  mother's  training,  combined 
with  that  of  the  priest,  had  prepared  him  to 
love  royalty,  and  accordingly  he  was  ready 
now  to  love  it  with  all  his  heart.  Subse- 
quently it  would  be  his  father  who,  as  a  vet- 
eran, in  his  turn  would  influence  his  mind. 

After  attending  the  festivities  in  honor  of 
the  restoration,  Madame  Hugo  went  to  Thi- 


onville.  She  did  not,  however,  remain  there 
long.  The  proud  spirits  of  husband  and 
wife  allowed  neither  of  them  to  compromise 
their  political  principles,  and  the  recent 
events  aggravated  their  differences  of  opin- 
ion to  such  a  degree  that  at  length  they 
caused  a  separation  between  them.  But  on 
these  domestic  discords  it  is  not  our  place  to 
dwell. 

Napoleon  returned  from  Elba.  During  the 
period  of  the  Hundred  Days,  General  Hugo, 
who  recovered  his  position,  insisted  upon 
placing  his  two  sons  at  a  boarding  -  school, 
a  proceeding  on  his  part  which  by  no  means 
mitigated  the  hostility  with  which  they  re- 
garded the  imperial  government.  Victor  was 
deprived  of  his  great  delight — the  evenings 
spent  in  her  father's  salon  with  Adele  Fou- 
cher,  the  object  of  his  secret  love.  Moreover, 
for  the  very  day  when  he  was  again  to  be- 
come an  imprisoned  schoolboy  he  had 
schemed  that  his  marionnettes  should  per- 
form a  piece  of  his  own  composing,  "Le 
Palais  Enchante."  It  was  consequently  with 
the  greatest  difficulty  that  he  restrained  his 
tears  when,  in  company  with  Eugene,  he 
crossed  the  threshold  of  the  college  Cordier 
et  Decotte  in  the  Rue  Ste.  Marguerite. 

The  young,  however,  soon  forget  their 
troubles,  and  the  school-days  seem  to  have 
been  happy  enough. 

Eugfine  was  now  nearly  fifteen,  and  Victor 
thirteen.  It  was  not  long  before  the  two  boys 
were  elevated  into  two  "kings"  at  the  pen- 
sion Decotte,  their  schoolfellows  being  di- 
vided into  two  detachments — those  under  Eu- 
gene styling  themselves  the  "calves,"  those 
under  Victor  being  called  the  "dogs."  The 
result  of  this  division  was  some  furious  fight- 
ing; but,  whether  they  were  at  peace  or  at 
war,  no  one  ever  for  a  moment  thought  of 
disputing  the  authority  of  the  leaders. 

Victor  Hugo  still  remembers  with  much 
amusement  that  he  was  a  terrible  despot.  He 
never  allowed  the  smallest  act  of  disobedi- 
ence, and  went  so  far  as  to  inflict  personal 
chastisement  upon  any  one  who  failed  to 
execute  his  orders. 

Among  the  most  devoted  of  his  subjects 
was  Leon  Gatayes,  the  celebrated  harpist, 
who  died  in  Paris  in  1877.  Besides  being  a 
musician,  he  was  a  man  of  taste  and  of  con- 
siderable attainments,  a  journalist  and  a  critic, 
and  of  untainted  loyalty.  At  the  time  of 
which  we  are  speaking  he  was  a  day  boarder, 
and  King  Victor  was  in  the  habit  of  intrust- 
ing him  with  various  commissions  out  of 


•If, 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


doors,  every  day  confiding  to  him  the  sum 
of  two  sous  to  be  spent  upon  Italian  cheese, 
of  which  one  half  was  to  be  dry  and  the 
other  half  moist.  When  it  arrived,  the  mon- 
arch would  survey  the  dainty  morsel  with  a 
critical  eye;  if  it  were  "all  moist,"  a  hail- 
storm of  thumps  would  descend  upon  the 
unlucky  shoulders  of  the  blundering  emis- 
sary ;  if  it  were  "  all  dry,"  a  perfect  avalanche 
of  kicks  would  assail  his  shins. 

Fifty  years  afterwards  the  artist  inquired 
of  the  poet: 

"Do  you  remember  those  days?  My  legs 
are  sore  still!" 

"But  you  were  a  head  taller  than  I  was," 
the  poet  replied;  "why  did  you  not  pitch 
into  me?" 

"Oh,  I  dared  not,"  answered  the  other; 
"you  told  me  I  should  not  have  any  more  of 
your  commissions  to  execute,  and  the  mere 
threat  took  away  all  thought  of  revenge." 

In  spite  of  his  tyranny,  the  king  of  the 
"dogs"  was  altogether  a  favorite, and  certain- 
ly set  his  subjects  a  tine  example  of  industry. 

General  Hugo  intended  that  his  boys  should 
ultimately  go  to  the  Ecole  Polytechnique.  In 
addition  to  their  ordinary  lessons,  they  at- 
tended courses  of  lectures  in  physics,  phi- 
losophy, and  mathematics  at  the  college 
Louis-le-Grand.  Their  talent  for  mathematics 
brought  them  under  the  notice  of  the  mas- 
ters, and  they  both  obtained  honorable  men- 
tion at  the  general  examination  by  the  pro- 
fessors of  the  university. 

Victor  had  a  way  of  solving  problems  that 
was  peculiar  to  himself.  He  would  not  fol- 
low in  the  beaten  tracks,  and  would  not  be 
content  to  obtain  his  results  by  the  ordinary 
methods,  always  arriving  at  the  conclusion 
by  some  indirect  and  unrecognized  mi-ins: 
as  it  were,  inventing  his  solution  rather  than 
deducing  it.  It  would  be  fair  to  describe 
him  as  "  a  romantic  mathematician,"  and  the 
licenses  he  took  were  often  far  from  pleas- 
ing to  the  professors,  who  could  not  look 
with  favor  upon  any  deviations  from  the  old 
routine.  But  it  was  not  in  the  mysteries  of 
any  algebraic  symbols  that  the  lad  found  his 
chief  delight ;  poetry  rather  than  mathematics 
occupied  his  thoughts,  and  at  the  age  of 
thirteen  he  wrote  his  first  verses  about  Ro- 
land and  the  age  of  chivalry.  Not  having 
learned  his  prosody,  he  invented  his  laws  of 
rhythm  for  himself. 

All  the  world  at  that  time  was  trying  to 
write  poetry.  Even  Lariviere  tried  his  hand 
at  verse;  Decotte  the  schoolmaster,  Engine, 


and  twenty  of  his  schoolfellows,  as  well  as 
Victor,  became  worshippers  of  the  muse. 

But  the  young  students  did  not  limit  them- 
selves to  odes  and  fugitive  pieces;  they  com- 
posed grand  military  dramas  which  were  per- 
formed in  the  great  class-room.  The  tables 
were  all  pushed  together  to  form  a  otagc,  and 
underneath  these  the  actor-  divs-cd,  crouch 
ing  down  in  their  novel  greenroom  until 
summoned  to  perform  their  parts. 

The  schoolboy  king  took  Moliire  for  his 
model,  and  wrote  plays  of  which  he  had  to 
take  the  principal  character  himself.  For 
these  performances  the  mo3t  elaborate  cos- 
tumes were  held  to  be  indispensable,  and 
Victor  Hugo, who  wears  no  decorations  now, 
would  make  his  appearance  covered  with 
t IK-HI  in  all  varieties.  Grand  crosses  of  every 
hue,  manufactured  of  paper;  grand  orders, 
and  collars  composed  of  strings  of  marbles; 
grand  plumes,  grand  accoutrements,  com- 
pleted the  attire  of  monarchs,  commanders- 
in-chief,  and  other  conspicuous  characters. 
Never,  surely,  before  or  since,  did  genius  de- 
vise costumes  comparable  to  these! 

Not  satisfied  with  devoting  his  play-hours 
to  these  dramatic  pursuits,  the  young  author 
would  spend  a  portion  of  his  nights  in  trans- 
lating into  French  verse  the  odes  of  Horace 
and  various  fragments  of  Virgil  that  he  had 
learned.  At  a  later  page  we  will  give  ex- 
amples of  the  early  lispings  of  one  who  may 
fairly  claim  to  be  reckoned  in  the  register  of 
i  he  precocious. 

Already  a  change  was  coming  over  him; 
his  hair,  which  hitherto  had  been  fair,  like 
that  of  a  true  son  of  the  north,  was  assuming 
a  darker  shade;  his  features  were  getting 
more  marked,  and  his  eyes  were  gaining  an 
expression  of  thought.  The  poet  was  awa- 
kening within  him. 

A  moment  may  be  spared  to  take  a  cursory 
glance  at  some  of  his  earliest  lyrical  essays, 
which,  owing  to  an  accident,  he  had  the  op- 
portunity.of  multiplying  at  will. 

In  the  course  of  one  of  the  battles  that  oc- 
curred between  the  "calves "  and  the  "dogs " 
during  a  walk  near  the  pond  at  Auteuil,  Vic- 
tor was  so  seriously  injured  in  the  knee  that 
it  was  feared  at  first  that  his  leg  would  have 
to  be  amputated.  He  refused  to  betray  the 
name  of  the  ' '  soldier  "  who  in  the  heat  of  the 
fray  had  taken  a  stone  and  made  a  sling  of 
his  pocket-handkerchief,  thus  inflicting  so  se- 
rious an  injury  upon  the  hostile  "general." 

The  respite  from  mathematics  that  the 
lamed  boy  gained  through  his  accident  was 


THEATRICAL  PERFORMANCE  AT  TEE  PENSION  DECOTTE. 


48 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   *TIME. 


most  welcome  to  him,  and  the  hours  of  his 
freedom  were  pleasantly  occupied  in  compos- 
ing odes,  satires,  epistles,  and  poems  in  what- 
ever style  illicit  chime  in  with  his  fancy, 
amorous,  chivalrous,  languishing,  or  terrible. 
In  after-years  Madame  Victor  Hugo  came 
across  ten  old  exercise-books  full  of  verses 
dated  1815  and  1816.  These  first  efforts  of 
art  arc  very  curious.  On  the  fly-leaf  of  the 
last,  which  contains  many  scraps  of  interest, 
is  inscribed,  in  the  lad's  own  handwriting, 
' '  The  nonsense  that  I  wrote  before  I  was 
born ;"  and  below  this  the  rough  drawing  of 
an  egg,  inside  which  is  sketched  a  bird,  as  is 
explained  by  the  word  "oiseau"  underneath. 


:'THE   NONSENSE   THAT  T  WROTE   BEFORE    I 
WAS  BORN." 

The  apprentice  poet  would  appear  not  to 
have  been  always  satisfied  with  his  produc- 
tions. To  one  of  the  pieces  is  appended 
the  note  "An  honest  man  may  read  all  of 
this  which  is  not  cancelled,"  the  pen  having 
been  drawn  through  the  whole  composition. 
A  few  pages  further  on  is  a  piece  without  a 
title,  and  at  the  bottom  the  remark  ' '  Let  him 
who  can,  find  a  title ;  I  have  yet  to  discover 
what  I  have  been  writing  about." 

Notwithstanding  his  modesty,  his  genius 
was  not  invariably  at  fault.  In  some  notes 
that  have  all  the  tokens  of  being  conscien- 
tious he  asserts  that  although  he  is  aware 
that  some  of  his  verses  are  bad,  some  miser- 
ably weak,  and  some  only  barely  passable, 
yet  he  believes  that  he  has  written  some  that 
are  really  good. 

And  it  is  to  be  observed  how  he  does  not 
by  any  means  limit  himself  to  petty  subjects; 


his  imagination  will  not  content  itself  with 
trifles.  After  the  second  restoration  he  wrote 
a  tragedy  upon  the  return  of  Louis  XVIII., 
entitled  "Irtame'ne,"  with  K»-yplian  names 
to  the  characters.  His  perusal  of  Voltaire's 
plays  had  given  him  a  predilection  for  this 
particular  style.  A  few  months  later  he  was 
writing  a  second  tragedy,  which  he  called 
"  Athelie,  ou  les  Scandinavcs;"  but  his  taste 
had  so  much  developed  that  he  desisted  at  the 
end  of  the  third  act  and  never  completed  it. 

But  tragedies  alone  did  not  suffice ;  he  com- 
posed elegies,  idyls,  fables,  romances,  conun- 
drums, madrigals,  and  even  puns  in  verse. 
He  sang  of  bards  and  fair  Canadians;  he 
translated  Ausonius,  and  perpetrated  a  comic 
opera! 

Several  of  his  translations  have  been  re- 
produced, and  specimens  of  them  may  be 
found  in  "Victor  Hugo  Raconte,"  and  in 
"Litterature  et  Philosophic  Melees." 

A  few  lines  of  an  unpublished  translation  of 
a  passage  in  the  "^Eneid  "  may  be  here  intro- 
duced. It  will  serve  as  a  sample  of  the  trans- 
lator's power.  It  is  the  description  of  Cacus  • 

"  Vois  stir  ce  moiit  desert  ces  rochers  eutasses, 
Vois  ces  blocs  snspendus,  ces  debris  disperws ; 
I. a,  dans  tin  autre  immense  au  jour  inaccessible, 
Vivait  1'affreux  Cacns,  uoir  g6ant,  monstre  horrible. 
A  ses  portes  pendaieut  des  cranes  entr'onverts 
Pules,  sonilles  de  sang  et  de  fange  converts. 
Ses  menrtres  cbaque jonr  faisaient  fumer  la  terre, 
De  ce  monstre  hideiix  Vnlcain  otait  le  pere ; 
Sa  gorge  vomissait  des  tout-billons  de  feux 
Et  sou  e'uorme  masse  6pouvautait  nos  yeux." 

VIRO.  JEn.  viii.  190-200. 

It  is  quite  open  to  question  whether  this 
terrible  Cacus  is  at  all  comparable  as  a  ro- 
mantic type  to  Han  d'Islande;  but  in  those 
days  Victor  Hugo  thought  of  nothing  beyond 
the  classics,  and  in  his  original  early  pieces 
the  undercurrent  of  sentiment  that  tinges 
them  all  is  his  love  of  the  Bourbons.  He 
was  but  fourteen  years  old,  and  he  believed 
in  them  with  all  sincerity. 

To  a  certain  extent,  all  these  youthful  pro- 
ductions are  the  echoes  of  his  mother's  teach- 
ing and  the  outcome  of  a  veneration  for  her, 
who,  like  a  muse,  though  she  might  not  actu- 
ally dictate  his  rhymes,  yet  inspired  all  his 
ideas. 

The  child  had  neither  the  right  nor  the 
power  to  argue  with  his  mother;  he  yielded 
to  her  with  all  reverence,  not  supposing  that 
she  could  teach  him  other  than  the  truth.  He 
did  not  reason,  he  conformed;  his  mind  was 
but  the  reflex  of  the  mind  of  the  counsellors 
who  had  instructed  him. 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS  TIME. 


49 


CHAPTER  VI. 

A  Pamphleteer  at  Thirteen. — First  Connection  with  the  Academic  Francaise. — "L'enfant  sublime." — Cha- 
teaubriand or  Sonmet  the  Author  of  the  Mot. —  A  Romance  Written  in  a  Fortnight " Uug-Jargal." — 

Studies  for  Future  Works. — Revision  and  Publication.— Subject  of  Play  Performed  1S80. 


THUS  regarding  the  world  only  through 
the  medium  of  his  mother's  vision,  and  re- 
ceiving his  inspiration  solely  from  her,  Vic^ 
tor  Hugo  was  incapable  of  breaking  through 
the  bounds  of  the  circle  that  enclosed  him. 
His  passions  were  simply  those  of  his  in- 
structors; but,  like  a  sonorous  echo,  he  in- 
tensified what  he  repeated.  A  drum  touched 
even  by  an  infant's  hand  among  the  moun- 
tains will  reverberate  like  the  roll  of  thun- 
der. 

It  had  been  told  him,  and  with  justice,  that 
Napoleon  Bonaparte  was  a  tyrant  usurper; 
instantly  he  avowed  his  hatred  of  the  despot, 
and  within  a  few  days  after  the  battle  of 
Waterloo,  though  he  was  but  thirteen  years 
old,  he  came  out  as  a  pamphleteer,  issuing  a 
cry  of  indignation  against  the  now-defeated 
emperor,  the  general  tone  of  which  may  be 
judged  from  the  following  version  of  its 
opening  lines: 

41  Tremble,  thou  despot !  the  avenging  hand  of  fate 

Down  to  its  doom  thine  odious  empire  shakes ; 
Thy  bitter  day  of  dark  remorse  hath  dawned — 

Remorse,  that  cruel  tyrant  sure  o'ertakes. 
Tremble !  for  though  thy  lustful,  cursed  pride 

Covets  to  conquer,  burns  to  vanquish  all, 
Yet  thy  delirium  hath  outrun  itself, 

And  all  thy  schemes  of  selfish  glory  fall. 
But  now,  alas !  thy  very  fall  for  France 

Still  costs  her  blood,  still  makes  her  tears  to  flow ; 
For,  Waterloo,  the  victory  on  thy  field 

Is  but  a  mingled  cup  of  joy  and  woe." 

His  political  opinions,  as  we  have  said, 
were  only  a  reflex  of  others,  sure  to  be  modi- 
fied as  he  grew  older;  but  at  that  time,  owing 
to  his  education,  they  might  be  summed  up 
in  that  line  of  wonderful  logic : 

"  Who  hates  a  tyrant,  he  must  love  a  king." 

Such,  at  least,  was  Madame  Hugo's  con- 
viction; she  firmly  believed  that  the  Bour- 
bons, whom  the  invasion  had  brought  back, 
would  restore  to  France  her  liberty  by  re- 
lieving the  land  of  imperial  oppression.  She 
was,  moreover,  an  enthusiastic  admirer  of 
Voltaire ;  and  her  son.  through  sympathy  with 


her,  reverenced  Louis  XVIII.,  respected  the 
charter,  and  satirized  the  worthy  monks,  who, 
under  the  pretext  of  saving  men  from  eter- 
nal flames,  consigned  them  to  perdition  for 
eating  meat  on  forbidden  days.  It  was  a  con- 
tradiction of  things,  which  did  not  cease  to 
haunt  Victor  Hugo's  mind ;  and  we  shall 
soon  see  how,  ceasing  to  be  a  Catholic,  he 
became  a  freethinker,  always,  however,  not- 
withstanding that  the  ecclesiastical  authori- 
ties denounced  him  as  an  atheist,  remaining 
a  sincere  deist.  His  philosophical  work,  late- 
ly published,  comprises  the  impressions  of 
his  boyhood.  He  believes  in  God  in  spite  of 
the  priests,  and  in  liberty  in  spite  of  every- 
thing! 

But  though  his  professions  of  faith  were 
under  the  control  of  those  with  whom  he  as- 
sociated, his  poetical  talent  took  an  indepen- 
dent flight  that  was  solely  and  entirely  his 
own.  Without  communicating  his  intention 
to  any  one,  he  made  up  his  mind  to  compete 
for  the  poetical  prize  that  was  annually  of- 
fered by  the  Academic  Fran9aise.  It  was 
not  without  considerable  timidity  that  the 
young  student  of  the  college  Decotte  handed 
in  his  composition  at  the  secretary's  office. 
For  the  year  1817,  when  the  Restoration  was 
complete,  the  subject  proposed  was  "The  ad- 
vantages of  study  in  every  situation  of  life. " 

The  literary  class  might  beguile  themselves 
into  the  belief  that  ' '  advantages  of  study  " 
were  an  excuse  for  the  Restoration;  it  was 
well  that  the  mass  of  the  people  did  not  share 
their  persuasion. 

According  to  the  established  custom,  the 
young  competitor  had  to  write  his  name  in- 
side a  paper,  folded  and  sealed,  and  bearing 
a  motto  corresponding  with  what  was  sub- 
scribed to  the  poem.  The  verses  were  re- 
markable for  more  than  the  title.  The  com- 
mencing strain  was  somewhat  to  this  effect : 

"  When  the  fresh  dewdrops  earliest  rest 
Laving  the  tender  lily's  trembling  breast — 
When  the  glad  song-birds  chant  their  morning  lay, 
And  to  the  orient  sun  their  tribute  pay, 


50 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


Ye  peaceful  shades,  where  bough?  o'erhanging  meet 

I  seek,  I  happy  seek  your  calm  retreat 

Yes,  then  I  love  my  Virgil's  page  to  take, 

And  feel  my  heart  for  Dido's  sorrow  ache ; 

E'en  then,  inebriate  with  studious  joys, 

My  soul  the  peaceful  solitude  employs 

To  learn  the  lesson  useful  to  the  end, 

How  with  life's  anxious  evils  to  contend." 

Unfortunately,  in  the  course  of  the  poem, 
the  juvenile  author  introduced  the  couplet 

"And  though  the  thronging  scenes  of  life  I  shun, 
For  me  three  lustrums  scarce  their  course  have  run.' 

It  was  with  a  charming  simplicity  that  the 
future  philosopher  boasted  at  once  that  he 
had  fled  from  the  cities  and  haunts  of  princes 
and  of  men,  and  yet  acknowledged  in  ac- 
ademic phrase  that  he  was  hardly  fifteen 
years  old.  The  avowal  raised  the  suspicion 
of  the  judges,  and  the  Academicians  took  the 
lines  as  an  affront  to  their  dignity.  Accord- 
ingly, the  first  prize  was  divided  equally  be- 
tween Saintine  and  Lebrun;  the  second  was 
awarded  to  Casimir  Delavigne ;  a  "  proximo 
accessit"  was  assigned  to  Loyson;  and  an 
"honorable  mention"  accorded  to  Victor 
Hugo,  in  spite  of  his  presumed  attempt  to 
mystify,  although  there  was  little  doubt  that 
his  was  the  most  meritorious  of  all  the  com- 
positions that  had  been  sent  in. 

Saintine,  Lebrun,  and  Casimir  Delavigne 
are  all  well-known  names,  and  will  reappear 
in  the  course  of  this  record.  Loyson  is  not 
so  well  remembered,  but  his  clique  entered  a 
protest  against  the  Academic  for  having  ad- 
judged him  only  an  "accessit."  He  died 
young,  and  it  has  been  said  of  him  that  he 
held  a  place  between  Millevoye  and  Lamar- 
tine,  approaching  nearer  the  latter  in  the 
spirituality  of  his  ideas. 

Altogether  the  competition  had  been  of  a 
brilliant  character;  but  when  the  verses  were 
read  in  public,  the  decision  of  the  judges  did 
not  avail  to  prevent  Victor  Hugo's  produc- 
tion from  being  received  with  the  loudest 
applause. 

The  laureate  of ' '  three  lustrums"  first  heard 
of  his  success  from  his  brother,  who  brought 
him  the  news  while  he  was  playing  at  pris- 
oner's base  with  General  Lecourbe's  son, 
Victor  Jacquemont,  and  some  other  boys. 
So  interested  was  he  in  his  game  that  he  did 
not  allow  it  to  be  interrupted  by  his  brother's 
communication . 

In  the  report  that  was  published  there  ap- 
peared a  paragraph  to  the  effect  that  if  M. 
Hugo  were  really  only  as  old  as  he  represent- 
ed, he  deserved  some  encouragement  from 


the  Academic.  This  at  once  aroused  Mad- 
ame Hugo's  indignation.  She  sent  a  cate- 
gorical statement  to  M.  Raynouard,  the  secre- 
tary, who  had  drawn  up  the  report,  and  he 
acknowledged  her  communication  by  saying 
that  if  the  author  of  the  poem  had  really 
spoken  the  truth,  he  should  be  very  pleased 
to  make  his  acquaintance. 

More  indignant  than  ever,  Madame  Hugo 
hurried  off  to  her  son  at  the  college. 

"Come  with  me,"  she  said;  "  come  and  lei 
me  show  you  to  these  unbelievers  who  assert 
that  you  are  a  man.  I  have  the  register  of 
your  birth  in  my  pocket!" 

Together  they  hastened  to  the  secretary, 
who  was  manifestly  somewhat  abashed,  and 
could  only  stammer  out  the  explanation  that 
"he  could  never  have  supposed  it  possible." 

Poor  M.  Raynouard  was  a  poet  who  had. 
been  brought  forward  under  the  patronage 
of  Napoleon  I.  He  was  a  worthy  and  a 
learned  man.  This  is  about  the  limit  of  the 
tribute  that  can  be  paid  to  his  memory.  By 
the  emperor's  command  he  brought  out 
several  tragedies,  of  which  the  fortunate  fate 
has  been  that  they  are  forgotten;  certainly 
he  was  not  the  man  to  discern  the  marks  of 
a  rising  genius. 

Some  of  his  associates  were  more  quick- 
sighted.  First,  there  was  Frangois  de  Neuf- 
cblteau,  who  had  himself  been  a  precocious 
boy,  and  had  received  from  Voltaire,  by  way 
of  encouragement  for  his  essays,  the  lines 

"The  womb  of  time  mnst  my  successor  bear  ; 
Yet  thee,  thee  would  I  choose  to  be  my  heir !"  • 

Neufchateau  became  rather  a  questionable 
poet  and  a  sceptical  politician,  but  still  made 
himself  a  name.  Notwithstanding  his  ad- 
vanced age,  he  took  an  interest  in  all  that 
was  going  on,  and  addressed  the  young  as- 
pirant in  this  wise : 

"Friend  of  the  Muses !  come  to  my  embrace ; 
In  thee  the  tender  love  of  poesy  I  trace !"  t 

At  a  later  date,  when  the  lad  Victor  had 
grown  into  manhood,  the  worty  Neufcha- 
teau,  it  must  be  owned,  became  somewhat 
startled  at  his  prodigious  triumphs,  and,  after 
reading  the  "Odes  et  Ballades,"  broke  out 
into  the  exclamation  "Unfortunate  !  he  will 
ruin  himself!  He  is  failing  to  fulfil  his  early 
promise !" 


"II  fuut  bien  que  1'on  me  sncc£de, 
Et  j'aime  en  vous  mon  he'ritier." 
t  "Teudre  ami  des  neuf  soeurs,  mes  bras  voua  sont 

ouverts ; 
Venez,  j'aime  toujonrs  les  vers." 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


51 


Another  member  of  the  Academic,  Cam- 
penon,  who  was  Delille's  successor,  and  a  fer- 
vent admirer  of  Bernardin  de  Saint-Pierre, 
subsequently  notorious  for  his  hatred  of  ro- 
manticism, likewise  made  some  reference  to 
Victor  Hugo's  poem,  and  indirectly  express- 
ed his  admiration  of  it. 

"O'erdone  with  wit  and  surfeited  are  we; 

Men's  hearts  are  ice,  for  whom  no  verse  can  make 
The  sense  of  pleasure,  though  it  teem  with  charms 
That  Malfllatre's  envy  might  awake."  * 

But  Chateaubriand,  the  most  illustrious  of 


cently  appeared  in  a  curious  publication  en- 
titled "  L'Intermediaire,"  and  are  not  un- 
worthy of  repetition. 

"Many  a  time, "writes  the  author  of  the 
notice,  "have  I  heard  this  celebrated  ver- 
dict assigned  to  Chateaubriand.  All  Victor 
Hugo's  biographers,  one  after  another,  have 
adored  this  word  '  sublime,' and  it  matters 
little  to  the  poet  who  it  was  that  thus,  for 
the  first  time,  depicted  his  youthful  glory. 
But,  though  Chateaubriand  has  the  credit  of 
it,  the  expression  was  not  originally  his. 


CHATEAfBKIAND. 


all  the  Academicians  of  1817,  went  further 
than  any  other;  he  exclaimed,  "The  child  is 
sublime !" 

Perpetually  quoted  as  this  expression  has 
been,  it  has  been  questioned  whether  it  really 
ought  to  be  originally  attributed  to  Chateau- 
briand. The  details  of  this  debate  have  re- 


*  "L'esprit  et  le  bon  gout  nous  ont  rassasies; 

J'ai  rencontre  des  coeurs  de  glace 
Pour  des  vers  pleius  de  charme  et  de  verve  et  de  grace 
Que  Malfllatre  eut  envies !" 


"  One  Sunday,  long  years  ago,  I  was  break- 
fasting with  Alexandre  Soumet.the  author  of 
the  'Divine  fipopee.'  .  .  .  fimile  and  Antony 
Deschamps  were  present.  In  the  course  of 
conversation,  I  referred  to  the  phrase  always 
attributed  to'Chateaubriand. 

"  '  Stop,'  said  Soumet,  '  I  must  not  allow 
that  observation  of  yours  to  go  unconnected. 
It  was  I  who  first  wrote  to  Chateaubriand 
and  called  his  attention  to  Hugo  as  I'enfant 
sublime,  and  I  appeal  to  fimile  and  Antony 
to  say  whether  it  was  not  so.' 


52 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS  TIME. 


"Both  the  Deschamps  confirmed  what  he 
said. 

"This  conversation  was  reported  in  the 
Abbaye-aux-Bois,  the  residence  of  Madame 
Recamier,  who  repeated  it  to  Chfiteaubriand. 

"  '  The  words  express  so  decided  a  truth,' 
was  the  reply  of  the  author  of  the  '  Genie  du 
Christianisme,'  'that  any  one  might  natu- 
rally have  used  them;  and  if  Soumet  has  the 
advantage  of  me,  he  is  quite  entitled  to  the 
recognition  that  he  claims.'" 

At  least  the  discussion  demonstrates  one 
thing:  it  proves  that  whether  or  no  ChSteau- 
briand  was  the  first  to  apply  the  epithet,  at 
any  rate,  in  his  own  mind,  he  considered  Vic- 
tor entitled  to  be  designated  "1'enfant  sub- 
lime. ''  He  never  ceased  to  regard  him  with 
affection  and  admiration,  and  was  among 
the  number  of  those  who  gave  him  substan- 
tial proofs  of  their  friendship. 

After  Chateaubriand  had  spoken  of  him  in 
this  way  in  a  notice  in  the  Cbn^erwifctfre,  Vic- 
tor Hugo  was  taken  to  him  by  M.  Agier  to 
thank  him  for  his  favorable  criticism,  and 
there  was  established  between  them  a  union, 
full  of  kindness  on  the  one  hand  and  enthusi- 
asm on  the  other,  which  was  cordially  main- 
tained for  four  or  five  years.  On  the  mar- 
gin of  one  of  his  commonplace-books  Victor 
Hugo  wrote,  "I  would  be  Chateaubriand  or 
nothing, "  so  that  it  may  be  well  understood 
how  much  he  appreciated  the  praise  of  one 
whom  he  deemed  his  master. 

To  obtain  an  "honorable  mention  "in  a 
concours  of  the  French  Academy  was  an 
event  that  was  always  published  in  the  news- 
papers ;  accordingly,  in  1817,  Victor  Hugo's 
name  became  to  a  certain  extent  known,  if 
not  renowned.  His  poem  on  "  The  Advan- 
tages of  Study  "  was  printed  separately,  and 
is  now  a  rare  bibliographical  curiosity.  In 
one  copy  there  is  a  dedication  of  six  verses 
to  M.  D.  L.  R.  (M.  de  la  Riviere),  signed  V. 
M.  H. 

This  was  not  the  only  literary  success  that 
he  made  at  this  period;  before  leaving  the  col- 
lege Decotte  he  wrote  his  first  essay  in  prose, 
and  composed  his  romance  of  "  Bug-Jargal." 

He  had  promised  some  of  his  schoolfel- 
lows not  to  take  more  than  a  fortnight  in  the 
composition  of  this  romance,  so  that  it  might 
be  ready  in  tune  for  a  kind  of  literary  ban- 
quet that  they  used  to  hold  once  a  month. 
He  kept  his  word,  and  had  his  manuscript 
duly  prepared  by  the  appointed  day. 

Although  this  book  was  remodelled,  and  in 
great  measure  rewritten  by  the  author  in 


1825,  it  was,  nevertheless,  his  first  work  of 
the  kind.  It  relates  a  dramatic  episode  of 
the  revolt  of  the  negroes  of  St.  Domingo  in 
1791.  Bug-Jargal,  the  hero  of  the  story,  is 
the  slave  of  one  of  the  colonists  of  the  island 
and  bears  a  secret  love  for  his  master's 
daughter,  a  fascinating  child,  betrothed  to 
her  cousin  Leopold  d'Auverney.  Having 
once  been  rescued  by  this  cousin,  after  being 
condemned  to  death  for  an  act  of  rebellion, 
Bug-Jargal,  at  the  outbreak  of  the  insurrec- 
tion in  which  the  whites  were  being  massa- 
cred, first  rushes  in  and  saves  the  life  of  the 
girl  he  loves,  and  next  saves  the  life  of  her 
cousin,  whom  he  hates.  It  is  solely  to  his 
exertions  that  the  young  couple  escape  the 
vengeance  that  had  been  prepared  for  them 
by  Jean  Biassou,  the  leader  of  the  revolt,  and 
by  a  deformed  and  hideous  wretch  called 
Habibrah.  At  the  end,  after  having  thus  he- 
roically sacrificed  his  feelings,  Bug-Jargal  sac- 
rifices his  life,  being  shot  down  by  the  colo- 
nists. 

It  seems  almost  a  pity  that  this  work  was 
ever  retouched.  The  feature  in  it  that  is 
now  most  worthy  of  remark  is  that  it  con- 
tains the  first  rough  sketches  of  some  of  Vic- 
tor Hugo's  immortal  characters,  being,  as  it 
were,  the  study  for  some  of  his  finest  pictures. 

Like  Ruy  Bias,  Bug-Jargal  is  an  earth- 
worm enamoured  of  a  star,  and,  like  Hernani, 
he  dies  for  a  point  of  honor.  Habibrah,  the 
dwarf,  is  the  foreshadow  of  the  hideousness 
of  Quasimodo  and  the  spitefulness  of  Tri- 
boulet;  while  the  description  of  the  "obi" 
clutching  at  the  root  of  a  tree  in  his  frightful 
fall  to  the  bottom  of  the  Gulf  of  St.  Domin- 
go prefigures  the  archdeacon  Claude  Frollo 
clinging  to  a  gutter-pipe  when  precipitated 
by  the  bell-ringer  from  the  tower  of  Notre 
Dame. 

These  crude  sketches  of  the  master-hand 
are  worthy  of  careful  study;  they  serve  in  a 
degree  to  illustrate  the  gradual  development 
of  his  chefs-d'oeuvre,  and  are  curious  as  well 
as  interesting.  "Bug-Jargal"  may  be  con- 
sidered as  an  early  stage  in  the  literary  revo- 
lution of  1830;  and  this,  the  first  note  of  the 
romance-writer,  in  the  sixteenth  year  of  his 
age,  is  a  cry  in  favor  of  the  oppressed,  a  de- 
fence of  the  suffering,  an  exaltation  of  self- 
devotion,  and  a  plea  for  liberty. 

This  remarkable  production  did  not  ap- 
pear in  print  until  1825,  after  it  had  been  re- 
vised and  corrected,  and,  consequently,  not 
until  after  the  public  mind  had  been  thrilled 
by  the  terrible  character  of  "  Han  d'Islande." 


'A  BLACK  FLAG  WAS  HOISTED   ON   THE  MOUNTAIN 


54 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  JUS   TIME. 


The  work,  by  comparison,  seemed  tamer 
than  it  was  in  reality,  and  contained  some 
remarkable  passages  that  were  speedily  in- 
serted in  collections  of  extracts  from  the 
most  striking  compositions  of  the  day,  and 
which,  by  their  vivacity  of  expression  and 
harmony  of  execution,  have  become  models 
of  >tyle. 

One  passage  selected  from  Sergeant  Tha- 
dee's  narrative  may  be  introduced  to  serve  as 
an  illustration  of  the  style  of  the  touching 
stoiy: 

"As  you  wish  it,  captain,  I  must  tell  you 
that  although  the  great  negro  Bug-Jargal,  or 
Pierrot,  as  he  was  most  generally  called,  was 
both  bold  and  gentle,  and  the  bravest  man  in 
the  land — yourself,  of  course,  my  dear  cap- 
tain, always  excepted — I  was,  nevertheless, 
extremely  ill-disposed  towards  him;  so  much 
so  that,  when  I  heard  that  the  next  evening 
but  one  had  been  fixed  on  for  your  murder, 
I  went  to  him  in  a  furious  rage  and  vowed 
that,  if  you  were  killed,  either  he  or  (failing 
him)  ten  of  his  followers  should  be  shot  in 
revenge.  He  did  not  exhibit  the  slightest 
emotion  at  what  I  said,  but  an  hour  after- 
wards he  had  dug  a  great  hole  and  was  gone." 

We  may  break  his  narrative  just  to  ex- 
plain that  Bug-Jargal  had  made  his  escape  in 
order  to  avert  the  intended  murder  of  Cap- 
tain d'Auverney;  if  he  were  not  back  when 
;i  black  flag  was  hoisted  on  the  mountain,  his 
ten  associates  would  forthwith  be  executed. 

Thadee  goes  on: 

"When  the  flag  was  hoisted,  Bug-Jargal 
had  not  returned.  A  cannon  was  fired  as  a 
signal,  and  I  proceeded  to  take  the  ten  ne- 
groes to  the  place  of  execution,  known  as 
the  Great  Devil's  Mouth.  You  may  be  sure 
enough,  captain,  that  I  had  not  the  least  in- 
tention of  letting  the  fellows  off;  I  had  them 
all  bound  in  the  usual  way,  and  was  just 
arranging  my  platoons,  when  suddenly  Bug- 
Jargal  emerged  from  the  forest.  I  lowered 
my  gun  immediately.  He  came  bounding 
towards  me,  quite  out  of  breath,  and  said, 

"  'Good  evening,  Thadee  ;  I  am  just  in 
time.' 

"Without  another  word  he  at  once  set 
about  liberating  his  countrymen  from  their 
fetters." 


The  story  ends  with  the  execution  of  the 
hero,  who  could  not  and  would  not  survive 
his  love. 

In  a  preface  bearing  the  date  of  1832,  Vic- 
tor Hugo  observes  that  he  was  like  a  traveller 
pausing  on  his  road  to  look  back  to  his  start- 
ing-point among  the  mists  that  clouded  the 
horizon;  and,  in  re-editing  this  work,  it  was 
his  wish  to  publish  a  reminiscence  of  the 
boldness  with  which,  at  a  period  when  all 
was  serene,  he  had  dealt  with  that  weighty 
subject,  the  revolt  of  the  blacks  in  St.  Do- 
mingo in  1791.  It  was  truly  a  battle  of 
giants;  three  worlds  interested  in  the  issue: 
Europe  and  Africa  the  combatants,  America 
providing  the  battle-plain! 

The  first  edition  of  "Bug-Jargal"  had  a 
second  title  appended,  describing  it  as  one 
of  the  "Contes  sous  la  Tente."  These 
stories  never  appeared,  neither  did  "  La 
Quinquengrogne,"  a  romance  that  was  ad- 
vertised for  a  considerable  time  in  the  book- 
sellers' catalogues. 

Long  before  the  issue  of  the  book  itself,  the 
original  story  was  published  in  the  Conser- 
vateur  Litterairc,  a  magazine  to  which  we 
shall  have  to  refer  hereafter.  Captain  d'Au- 
verney is  there  called  Delmar.  The  name 
of  D'Auverney,  subsequently  introduced,  was 
one  which  General  Hugo  was  entitled,  if  he 
had  chosen,  to  assume. 

"Bug-Jargal, "then,  was  the  first  work  of 
any  considerable  length  that  Victor  Hugo 
wrote.  It  was  translated  into  English  in 
1826. 

In  November,  1880,  Richard  Lesclide  and 
Pierre  Elzear  brought  out  a  drama,  at  the 
Theatre  ChSteau-d'Eau,  founded  on  the  ro- 
mance, which  proved  very  successful.  It 
had  the  prime  merit  that  the  original  sub- 
ject was  not  over  -  mutilated  in  the  adapta- 
tion. 

Since  revising  the  proofs,  the  author  has 
not  read  the  book,  being  in  this  respect  un- 
like the  Arab  shepherd  who,  when  he  had 
risen  to  be  a  vizier,  used  to  contemplate  his 
coarse  vest  and  his  reed  pipe. 

Nevertheless,  this  early  essay  is  one  that 
Victor  Hugo  might  fairly  reperuse  with 
pride  ;  it  contains  the  germs  of  his  mighty 
genius. 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


55 


CHAPTER  VII. 

'The  Jeux  Floraux  at  Toulouse.— "Les  Vierges  de  Verdun."— Filial  Affection.— Letter  from  M.  Soumet 

Reluctance  to  Go  to  the  ficole  Polytechnique. — Allowance  Withdrawn. — Numerous  Changes  of  Resi- 
dence.— Publication  of  Odes. — Le  Conservateur  Litteraire. — Description  of  the  Magazine.— Victor  Hugo  a 
Critic.— His  Articles  and  Noms  de  Plume — Opinion  of  Lamartiue's  first  "Meditations  Poetiques."— First 
Interview  of  the  Two  Poets. 


AT  the  time  when  the  schoolboy  of  six- 
teen was  writing  "Bug-Jargal,"  he  was  not 
only  a  laureate  of  the  Academic,  but  became 
also  a  prize-winner  in  the  Jeux  Floraux — 
celebrated  games  that  had  been  established 
in  Toulouse  in  the  fourteenth  century,  and 
which  have  been  reorganized  under  the  pat- 
ronage of  Clemence  Isaure.  The  subject  of 
the  poem  for  which  he  obtained  the  wreath 
was  historical,  being  founded  on  the  story  of 
the  "Vierges  de  Verdun,"  three  young  sis- 
ters— Henriette,  Hel&ne,  and  Agathe  Watrin 
— who  were  condemned  to  death  by  Fou- 
•quier-Tinville,  because  they  had  presented 
flowers  to  the  Prussians  on  their  entry  into 
the  town,  and  distributed  money  and  other 
relief  among  the  emigrants. 

A  short  time  afterwards  Victor  Hugo  won 
the  golden  lily  for  another  of  his  composi- 
tions, a  poem  on  the  subject  of  the  erection 
of  Henry  IV. 's  statue  on  the  Pont  Neuf,  a 
ceremony  of  which  the  young  writer  had 
himself  been  a  spectator. 

In  these  competitions  at  Toulouse,  Vic- 
tor's brother  Abel,  who  likewise  showed  con- 
siderable literary  talent,  gained  several  hon- 
ors. 

The  ode  on  the  statue  of  Henry  IV.  was 
composed  in  a  single  night,  and  under  cir- 
cumstances that  make  it  a  touching  tribute 
of  filial  affection.  Madame  Hugo  was  suf- 
fering from  inflammation  of  the  chest,  and 
her  two  younger  sons  were  taking  their 
turn  to  sit  up  with  her  at  night.  On  the 
5th  of  February,  1819,  it  was  Victor's  turn 
to  remain  in  the  invalid's  room.  In  the 
course  of  the  evening,  his  mother,  ever  keen- 
ly interested  in  his  performances,  and  a  firm 
believer  in  his  future  name,  and  knowing 
that  the  following  day,  according  to  the 
rules  of  the  competition,  was  the  latest  on 
which  contributions  could  be  received,  al- 
luded to  his  composition,  supposing  it  to 
have  been  duly  sent  off.  Victor  was  obliged 


to  confess  that  the  ode  had  not  been  written, 
and  pleaded  that  he  had  had  too  many  oc- 
cupations to  be  able  to  attend  to  it.  His 
mother  rebuked  him  gently;  but  the  youth 
could  see  plainly  enough  that  she  laid  her- 
self down  with  a  feeling  of  sore  disappoint- 
ment weighing  on  her  heart. 

No  sooner  was  she  asleep  than  Victor  set 
to  work;  he  wrote  diligently  all  through  the 
night,  and  when  she  awoke  at  daybreak  he 
had  the  completed  ode  to  lay  before  her  as  a 
morning  greeting.  The  manuscript  that  was 
sent  forthwith  to  Toulouse  went  after  being 
first  bedewed  with  a  mother's  tears. 

At  the  next  competition  at  the  Academic 
in  Toulouse  a  fresh  poem  that  Victor  Hugo 
sent  in,  upon  the  subject  of  Moses  on  the 
Nile,  gained  for  him  the  degree  of  "maitre- 
Ss-jeux-floraux,"  and  the  director  wrote  him 
the  following  letter: 

"  SIR, — Since  we  have  received  your  odes 
we  have  spoken  much  of  your  talents  and  of 
your  extraordinary  literary  promise.  Your 
age  of  seventeen  is  a  matter  of  surprise  to 
us  all,  to  some  almost  a  matter  of  increduli 
ty.  You  are  an  enigma  of  which  the  Muses 
keep  the  key.  ..." 

All  this  time  Victor's  general  studies  had 
been  progressing,  and  were  now  so  far  ad- 
vanced that  he  was  quite  capable  of  entering 
the  IScole  Polytechnique.  In  his  own  mind, 
however,  he  was  convinced  that  a  military 
life  was  not  in  the  least  his  vocation,  and 
both  he  and  his  brother  begged  not  to  be 
obliged  to  present  themselves  at  the  exami- 
nation. Only  with  extreme  reluctance  did 
General  Hugo  acquiesce  in  their  desire.  Sol- 
diers do  not  often  believe  in  their  sons' 
dreams  of  literary  glory,  and  doubtless  they 
are  frequently  right.  But,  finding  his  own 
wishes  thwarted  by  so  strong  an  opposition, 
he  resigned  himself  to  circumstances;  he 


56 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS  TIME. 


exhibited,  however,  the  annoyance  that  he 
felt  by  withdrawing  the  moderate  allowance 
he  had  hitherto  made  his  younger  sons,  and 
leaving  them  to  their  own  resources. 

As  the  result  of  this,  Victor  left  the  pen- 
sion, having  kept  all  the  school-terms,  and 
went  to  live  with  his  mother,  who,  since  the 
change  in  the  position  of  her  husband — now 
reduced  to  half -pay — had  been  obliged  to 
leave  her  apartments  in  the  Cherche-Midi 
and  to  find  a  less  expensive  place  of  abode. 

She  first  removed  to  the  Rue  des  Veilles- 
Tuileries,  and  resided  on  the  ground-floor  of 
a  house  of  which  Madame  Lacotte  occupied 
the  first  floor.  Thence  she  moved  again  to 
the  Rue  des  Vieux-Augustins,  into  a  house 
now  long  since  pulled  down,  but  formerly 
part  of  the  Musee  des  Petits-Augustins.  It 
had  originally  been  a  convent ;  its  site  at 
present  is  occupied  by  the  court-yard  of  the 
Palais  des  Beaux  Arts. 

Here  it  was  that  Madame  Hugo  was  so  se- 
riously ill;  and,  as  her  bedroom  was  on  the 
third  floor,  she  attributed  the  slowness  of  her 
recovery  to  the  difficulty  of  getting  open-air 
exercise,  and  to  obviate  this  she  made  an- 
other move  in  the  beginning  of  1821  to  10 
Rue  de  Mezieres.  Here  there  was  a  gar- 
den. 

As  already  remarked,  the  prevailing  work 
of  demolition  seems  never  to  have  had  any 
regard  for  the  various  residences  of  the  youth- 
ful poet.  Only  a  portion  of  the  house  in  the 
Rue  de  Mezieres  is  now  in  existence. 

Victor  Hugo  was  now  beginning  to  make 
himself  a  name.  For  two  years  previously 
he  had  been  applying  himself  zealously  to 
work,  and,  as  Rabbe  remarks  in  his  biogra- 
phy, 1819  and  1820  were  among  the  busiest 
and  most  decisive  years  in  his  life. 

Then  it  was  with  his  own  will  that  he 
entered  into  the  lists  with  Fortune  ;  and 
though  in  the  daily  labors  of  his  young  life 
he  dreamed  of  glory,  he  knew  that  it  could 
be  won  only  by  arduous  and  incessant  toil. 

At  various  short  intervals  he  composed  the 
odes,  loyal  and  religious,  that  were  collected 
into  his  first  published  volume  of  poetry. 

With  regard  to  his  principles,  it  has  been 
said: 

"  It  is  known  how  he  acquired  his  royalist 
partialities.  His  religion  found  its  way  into 
his  heart  through  his  imagination,  and  there 
he  saw  pre-eminently  the  highest  form  of 
human  thought  and  the  foremost  line  of  po- 
etical perspective.  The  society  into  which 
he  was  thrown,  and  which  received  him  with  i 


unbounded  adulation,  kept  up  unbroken  his 
illusions  about  his  creed;  but  all  along  the 
basis  of  his  political  doctrine  was  personal 
independence,  and,  although  partially  oblit- 
erated by  Catholic  symbols,  the  positive  phi- 
losophy of  his  early  training  flowed  on  per- 
sistently beneath." 

Among  other  occupations  at  this  period, 
he  was  contributing  to  a  periodical  called 
the  ConMi'vateur  Litteraire,  to  which  refer- 
ence has  been  already  made.  The  magazine 
is  hardly  to  be  found  now,  but  we  have  our- 
selves perused  it  in  the  "  Bibliotheque  Na- 
tionale."  It  consists  of  three  volumes,  and 
was  published  by  Boucher  in  1830  and  1821. 

Originally  it  was  started  by  the  three  young 
Hugos,  Victor  being  then  eighteen.  Eugene 
contributed  numerous  essays,  and  Abel  sup- 
plied the  third  volume  with  several  articles. 
The  rest  of  the  contributors  were  Ader,  The- 
odore Pavie,  J.  Sainte-Marie,  Jules  de  Saint- 
Felix,  Madame  Tastu,  Alfred  de  Vigny,  Emile 
Deschamps,  Alexandre  Soumet,  with  a  few 
others;  but  the  bulk  of  the  work  belonged  to 
the  three  brothers,  Victor's  share  amounting 
to  at  least  a  third  of  the  whole. 

From  these  articles  of  his  in  the  Conserta- 
teur,  Victor  made  a  selection  in  1834,  abbre- 
viating and  revising  them,  and  under  the 
title  of  a  "  Journal  des  Idees,  des  Opinions,  et 
des  Lectures  d'un  Jeune  Jacobite,"  composed 
the  first  part  of  his  "  Litterature  et  Philoso- 
phic Melees ;"  but,  as  the  author  of  the  ' '  Bibli- 
ographic Romantique,"  Ch.  Aselineau,  has  re- 
marked, it  is  in  the  magazine  as  originally 
issued  that  we  must  seek  the  polemical,  sa- 
tirical, and  Jacobite  poet  in  all  the  freshness 
and  vivacity  of  his  opinions  and  genius. 

The  opening  pages  of  each  number  were 
reserved  for  poetry,  and  at  the  commence- 
ment of  the  first  part  appears  a  satire  signed 
V.  M.  Hugo,  and  entitled  "L'Enroleur  Poli- 
tique. "  Prefixed  to  it  as  a  motto  is  the  Script- 
ure verse,  "The  light  shineth  in  darkness, 
and  the  darkness  comprehended  it  not. "  The 
poem  is  a  dialogue  between  an  art-student 
and  a  recruiting-sergeant.  The  adept,  who 
regards  the  study  of  literature  as  paramount 
to  everything,  exclaims, 

"  A  fool  I'd  be,  yonr  colors  would  forsake, 
My  rhymes  in  peace  at  my  own  choice  to  make ! 
In  lonely  den  I'd  rather  be  a  bear, 
Thinking  with  Pascal, laughing  with  Voltaire!" 

At  the  end  of  the  piece,  with  a  maturity  of 
expression  which  is  quite  surprising,  the 
young  author  pours  forth  his  wonted  echo 
of  his  mother's  teaching.  He  makes  a  pro- 


VICTOR  HUGO   AT  HIS  MOTHER'S  BEDSIDE. 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   Tl.Mi:. 


fession  of  his  royalist  faith,  enunciating  a 
creed  which  would  not  permanently  com- 
mand his  assent. 

In  the  .cry  first  number  the  Cowercateur 
betrays  unmistakable  indication  of  its  satiri- 
cal tendency.  It  announces  the  sale  of  a  stock 
of  literature,  the  property  of  a  well-known 
man  of  letters,  comprising,  among  other  rari- 
ties, a  collection  of  documents  relating  to  a 
variety  of  departments  of  human  knowledge 
— the  documents  being  extracts  from  the  best 
authors  copied  out  on  small  squares  of  pa- 
per, duly  arranged  according  to  their  sub- 
jects, and  carefully  spitted  on  iron  files.  Then 
follows  the  catalogue : 

A  file  of  birds; 

A  file  of  fish,  including  the  great  sea-serpent ; 
A  file  of  roses; 
A  file  of  English  costumes; 

A  file  of  famous  dogs,  Munito  and  the  great  New- 
foundland lately  added ; 
A  file  of  conjugal  fidelity,  ever  since  Lucretia ; 
A  file  of  disinterestedness  (this  file  runs  short) ; 
A  file  of  deeds  of  valor ; 
A  file  of  ancient  cookery,  etc. 

The  editor  adds  that  any  man  of  the  least 
intelligence  might,  by  merely  copying  the 
documents  verbatim,  concoct  an  educational 
or  any  other  work  that  was  demanded  of 
him ;  and  the  notice  winds  up  by  saying  that 
the  disposer  of  the  property  has  employed  no 
other  means  in  the  composition  of  his  own 
books. 

It  will  be  obvious  from  the  foregoing  ex- 
ample that  the  Conservateur  Litteraire  was 
not  deficient  in  humor.  The  facetious  notice 
was  preceded  by  Victor  Hugo's  first  prose  ar- 
ticle— a  curious  review  of  the  complete  works 
of  Andre  Chenier.  It  is  signed  with  the  ini- 
tial "E. ;"  others  are  signed  "H. ;"  and  two 
humorous  letters  upon  "L'Art  Politique" — 
a  poem  by  Berchoux — bore  the  fanciful  sig- 
nature "Publicola  Petisot."  Subsequently 
the  young  writer  subscribed  his  name  in  full, 
and  gives  his  reasons  for  doing  so  in  a  letter 
addressed  to  his  fellow-contributors  on  the 
subject  of  the  "Biographic  Nouvelle  des  Con- 
temporains,"  saying  that,  as  he  found  him- 
self compelled  to  make  some  vehement  at- 
tacks, he  felt  it  right  to  take  the  responsibil- 
ity, and  to  bear  the  consequences  of  his  own 
opinions. 

Previously  to  this,  however,  twenty-one  ar- 
ticles of  various  kinds  had  appeared,  signed 
simply  with  the  letter  "V."  Some  of  these 
were  in  prose  and  some  in  verse,  and  the 
greater  number  of  them  have  never  been  re- 
produced. The  composition  of  the  verses  is 


for  the  most  part  classical,  sedate,  and  pure. 
The  prose  articles,  which  are  reviews  of  Casi- 
mir  Delavigne,  Byron,  Moore,  Ancelot,  Gas- 
pard  de  Pons,  Walter  Scott,  Jacques  Delille, 
(  halt  aiibriaiul,  .Madame  Desbordes  Valmore, 
and  others,  are  excellent  studies,  and  exhibit 
the  author's  deep  reading  and  rich  fund  of 
knowledge.  Their  style  is  varied,  intellect- 
ual, and  well  balanced. 

The  editor  of  the  Cowervatenr  manifestly 
had  all  the  qualifications  for  being  a  first- 
rate  journalist,  and  his  talent  for  criticism 
would  doubtless  have  been  developed  to  a 
remarkable  degree  if  his  imagination  had 
not  transported  his  genius  into  another  di- 
rection. 

From  time  to  time  there  appeared  in  the 
magazine  various  translations  from  Lucan 
and  from  Virgil,  signed  M.  d'Auverney. 
Auverney,  or  Auverne,  is  a  village  seven  or 
eight  miles  from  Chateaubriant,  in  the  de- 
partment of  the  Loire  Inferieure,  where  Gen- 
eral Hugo  had  a  small  property  that  entitled 
him  to  the  name.  Victor  took  advantage  of 
this,  and  borrowed  it  for  a  nom  de  plume. 

Among  his  other  works  we  must  not  omit 
to  mention  his  dramatic  reviews.  That  the 
future  author  of  "Hernani"  should,  in  1820, 
have  analyzed  "L'Homme  Poli,"  a  poetical 
comedy  in  five  acts  by  M.  Merville,  as  well  as 
some  pieces  by  Dupin  and  Carmouche,  "Le 
Cadet  Roussel  Procida  "  of  the  Porte-Saint- 
Martin,  and  some  vaudevilles  by  M.  Pain 
and  M.  Bouilly — or  Pain  -  Bouilly,  as  they 
were  conjointly  called — was  a  whim,  or  per- 
haps rather  an  irony  of  fate,  that  demands  a 
record. 

But  the  most  curious,  as  the  most  remarka- 
ble, of  his  critiques  was  that  which  he  wrote 
upon  Lamartine's  "Premieres  Meditations 
Poetiques,"  which  had  just  been  published 
anonymously. 

"On  reading  such  verses,"  he  says,  "who 
would  not  exclaim  with  La  Harpe,  'Dost 
thou  not  hear  a  poet's  song  ?'  I  have  read 
this  book  more  than  once,  and,  in  spite  of  the 
carelessness,  the  neologisms,  the  repetitions, 
and  the  obscurity  that  I  notice  in  various 
parts,  I  am  tempted  to  say  to  the  author, 
'  Courage,  young  man!  you  are  one  of  those 
whom  Plato  would  have  overwhelmed  with 
honor  and  banished  from  his  republic.  You 
must  expect  to  be  driven  from  our  'land  of 
ignorance  and  anarchy;  but  in  your  exile  you 
will  fail  to  find  the  palms,  the  trumpets,  and 
the  wreaths  of  flowers  that  Plato  accorded  to 
the  poets.'" 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


59 


LAMARTINE. 

With  an  enthusiasm  that  was  thoroughly 
sincere,  the  reviewer  expresses  his  wonder  at 
the  appearance  of  such  a  book;  and,  recog- 
nizing the  embryo  glory  of  an  inspired  sing- 
er, in  spite  of  his  severity  as  a  purist,  he  com- 
miserates the  age,  which  he  fears  will  only 
scoff  at  the  productions  of  the  noble  and  un- 
known hand. 

It  was  not  long  before  he  became  acquaint- 
ed with  Lamartine,  who  has  himself  recorded 
their  first  interview.  The  account  was  writ- 
ten when  he  was  advanced  in  years : 

"Youth  is  the  time  for  forming  friend- 
ships. I  love  Hugo  because  I  knew  and 


loved  him  at  an  age  when  the  heart  is  still 
expanding  within  the  breast.  I  remember, 
as  though  it  were  but  yesterday,  the  day 
when  the  great  Due  de  Rohan,  then  a  mus- 
keteer, though  afterwards  a  cardinal,  came 
to  my  quarters  on  the  Quai  d'Orsay,  and 
said,  '  Come  with  me  and  behold  a  phenom- 
enon that  promises  a  great  man  for  France. 
Chateaubriand  has  already  named  him ' '  L'en- 
fant  sublime."  You  will  some  day  congrat- 
ulate yourself  that  you  have  seen  the  oak 
within  the  acorn.' 

"Following  the  duke,  I  started  off,  and 
soon  found  myself  on  the  ground-floor  of  an 
obscure  house  at  the  end  of  a  court. 

"There  a  grave,  melancholy  mother  was 
industriously  instructing  some  boys  of  vari- 
ous ages — her  sons.  She  showed  us  into  a 
low  room,  a  little  way  apart,  at  the  farther 
end  of  which,  either  reading  or  writing,  sat  a 
studious  youth,  with  a  fine,  massive  head,  in- 
telligent and  thoughtful.  This  was  Victor 
Hugo,  the  man  whose  pen  can  now  charm  or 
terrify  the  world. 

"Already he  had  written  odes  and  elegies; 
already  was  the  inspiration  of  a  great  poet 
foreshadowed  in  his  productions — works  of 
which  no  man  with  a  soul  within  his  breast 
could  fail  to  feel  the  power." 

Subsequently  we  shall  find  that  Lamartine 
became  less  lavish  in  his  praise,  but  at  that- 
time  his  admiration  of  the  young  author 
knew  no  bounds.  Our  object  here  is  to  show 
that  even  the  first  essays  of  Victor  Hugo  at- 
tracted the  attention  of  all  lovers  of  litera- 
ture. We  shall  hereafter  see  how  his  repu- 
tation continued  to  increase. 


00 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

The  Pamphlets  of  1S19.— A  Cruel  Separation. —  Publication  of  the  First  Odes. —Hard  Work.  —  Mother's 

Death.— Au  Affecting  Betrothal.— Offer  of  Marriage.— Duel  with  a  Life-guardsman Poverty  Hi  lively 

Borne.  — A  Young  Poet's  Budget.  — Publication  of  the  "Odes  et  Ballade*."  — Their  Success. —The 
Author's  Ideas  on  Odes. —Corrections  of  Manuscript.  —  Lodging  in  the  Rue  du  Dragon. —Account  of 
Royal  Pension. 


ONLY  a  portion  of  the  lyrical  pieces  dated 
1819  have  been  reprinted.  They  are  not  to 
be  found  anywhere  except  in  the  literary  re- 
views of  the  period,  and  are  of  no  interest 
beyond  what  they  afford  to  men  of  letters. 
Those  that  were  published  in  pamphlet  form 
have  become  so  rare  that  none  but  book-fan- 
ciers can  procure  them.  In  1880,  Charles 
Monselet  discovered  a  satire  on  "Le  Tele- 
graphe,"  an  octavo  pamphlet  of  twelve  pages, 
with  prose  notes  at  the  end,  signed  V.  M. 
Hugo,  and  bearing  the  date  1819.  The  book- 
seller refused  to  let  him  have  it  for  it£  weight 
in  gold ;  but  Monselet  read  it,  and  pronounced 
that  although  the  first  part  was  written  in  an 
antiquated  style,  and  might  have  come  from 
the  pen  of  Ancelot,  the  second  part  took  a 
higher  tone,  and  presented  a  colored  ima- 
gery that  shadowed  forth  the  future  author 
of  the  "  Odes  et  Ballades." 

The  young  poet  was  now  working  with 
increasing  energy.  His  greatest  pleasure 
was  to  accompany  his  mother  to  M.  Fou- 
cher's  house,  and  there  spend  long  evenings 
in  unspoken  admiration  of  the  maiden  to 
whom  his  whole  heart  was  devoted.  It 
was  not  long  before  these  admiring  glances 
were  noticed  by  the  parents,  to  whom  the 
danger  of  encouraging  such  a  passion  was 
apparent,  as  both  the  young  people  were  of 
an  age  when  marriage  was  out  of  the  ques- 
tion. By  mutual  consent  the  two  families 
broke  off  all  intimacy  for  a  tune. 

Victor  Hugo  found  expression  for  his 
grief  at  the  separation  in  a  poem  that  is  full 
of  sad  and  gentle  dignity.  It  is  entitled 
"  Le  Premier  Soupir." 

"Be  happy,  sweet  one !  all  thy  days  be  peace, 
Enjoy  calm  slumber  on  life's  flowing  stream, 

And  waves  of  gladness  lave  each  hour  of  thine  1 
But,  oh,  how  soon  doth  all  my  rapture  cease  I 
My  wounded  soul  dark  in  despair  doth  seem, 
Once  forced  to  love,  now  bidden  to  resign  1" 

In  spite,  however,  of  this  apparent  resigna- 
tion, the  obstacles  placed  in  the  way  of  his 


passion  only  increased  its  intensity,  and  ab- 
sence, instead  of  extinguishing  his  love, 
served  only  to  increase  it.  His  fevered  im- 
agination devised  a  thousand  means  by 
which  he  might  catch  a  glimpse  of  one 
without  whom  he  felt  it  was  impossible  to 
exist.  Numberless  are  the  stratagems  he 
contrived,  and  incredible  the  ingenuity  with 
which  they  were  executed;  the  freshness  of 
his  romance  was  itself  an  exquisite  idyl. 

An  instance  of  the  secret  understanding 
between  the  lovers  has  since  been  discover- 
ed. "  Han  d'Mande,"  which  we  shall  have 
to  describe  at  a  later  page,  though  it  did  not 
appear  till  1823,  was  commenced  in  1820.  It 
would  hardly  have  been  suspected  how, 
amid  the  recitals  of  crime  and  the  conglom- 
eration of  terrible  adventures,  and  beneath 
its  scenes  of  thrilling  horror,  there  lurks,  as 
it  were,  a  love-letter  in  some  yawning  and 
hideous  gulf,  a  message  of  tenderness  for 
one  young  girl.  The  pages  of  gloom  and 
horror  were  for  jailers,  the  passages  of  love 
were  for  her. 

Victor  never  despaired.  He  lived  confident 
in  his  future  happiness;  but  in  the  midst  of 
his  anticipations  he  was  overwhelmed  by  a 
terrible  blow. 

Madame  Hugo  took  cold ;  inflammation  of 
the  chest  again  set  in,  and  this  time  no  devo- 
tion on  the  part  of  her  sons  could  arrest  the 
malady. 

The  fondly  loved  mother  died  on  the  27th 
of  June,  1821.  Abel,  the  eldest  son,  was 
summoned  with  all  speed,  and  the  three 
brothers  followed  the  body  to  the  Church  of 
St.  Sulpice,  and  thence  to  the  Cemetery  of 
Mont  Parnasse. 

It  seemed  impossible  for  Victor  to  realize, 
as  he  returned  to  his  desolate  home,  that  he 
had  lost  forever  the  sweetness  of  maternal 

love: 

"  the  love  that  none  forgets ; 
The  bread  which  God  divides  and  multiplies: 
A  table  ever  spread  where  bounteous  grace 
To  eacli  his  portion  gives,  to  none  deniei?.'r 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


61 


Yet  he  was  to  partake  of  that  portion  no 
more.  He  had  lost  a  mother  who  to  him 
had  been  more  than  a  mother,  inspiring  him 
with  his  love  for  the  beautiful  and  his  rever- 
ence for  the  good. 

In  the  evening  of  the  day  of  the  funeral 
he  returned  to  the  cemetery,  and  there,  over- 
come with  grief  and  choked  by  sobs,  he  wan- 
dered up  and  down.  He  continued  his  walk 
till  late,  recalling  his  mother's  image,  and  ever 
and  again  repeating  her  name,  until  he  felt 
himself  involuntarily  attracted  towards  the 
being  who  alone  could  soften  the  bitterness 
of  his  sorrow.  He  wanted  tenderness  to  con- 
sole him  for  the  tender  love  that  he  had  lost. 

Hurrying  off  to  the  Rue  du  Cherche-Midi, 
he  looked  into  the  window  of  the  house  and 
saw  Adele  wearing  a  wreath  of  flowers  and 
dancing.  She  knew  nothing  of  what  had 
happened;  it  was  her  birthday,  and  her  fa- 
ther, not  to  mar  her  pleasure,  had  concealed 
from  her  the  circumstance  of  Madame  Hugo's 
death. 

Victor  called  on  the  following  day.  The 
young  lovers  shed  tears  together  over  his  be- 
reavement, and  exchanged  afresh  their  vows 
of  mutual  fidelity. 

Mademoiselle  Foucher  had  felt  the  separa- 
tion of  the  two  families  as  keenly  as  her  lov- 
er; like  him,  she  had  sighed  in  secret;  and 
when,  a  few  weeks  later,  he  came  in  his 
mourning  attire,  more  dejected  than  ever 
through  his  life  of  solitude,  and  made  a  for- 
mal offer  of  marriage,  the  young  girl  simply 
said  that  she  already  considered  herself  his 
fiancee.  Her  strength  of  purpose  was  so 
great  and  her  affection  so  sincere  that  her 
parents  knew  that  any  opposition  on  their 
part  would  be  of  no  avail;  but,  as  neither  of 
them  had  any  fortune,  it  was  imperative  that 
the  marriage  should  be  deferred  until  Vic- 
tor's resources  from  his  profession  should 
enable  him  to  maintain  a  home.  The  prom- 
ise, however,  went  far  to  revive  his  spirits. 

A  few  weeks  before  this  time  he  had  met 
with  an  adventure  which  had  somewhat  seri- 
ous consequences,  and  might  have  been  fatal. 
As  a  diversion  in  his  sorrow,  he  took  an  ex- 
cursion to  Versailles,  where,  after  taking  his 
luncheon  at  a  cafe,  he  sat  holding  a  news- 
paper in  his  hand,  but  which  he  was  too  ab- 
sorbed in  his  own  sad  thoughts  to  read. 
Sitting  by  his  side  was  a  life  -  guardsman, 
who,  growing  impatient  in  his  anxiety  to 
read  the  news,  and  observing  that  his  neigh- 
bor was  not  using  it,  snatched  the  paper 
roughly  from  his  hand.  The  young  man, 


who  looked  little  more  than  a  boy,  turned 
pale  with  rage,  and  forthwith  challenged  the 
soldier. 

A  duel  was  arranged,  the  meeting  taking 
place  the  same  day.  The  parties  fought  in 
a  room  attached  to  one  of  the  principal  bar- 
racks in  Versailles;  and,  in  order  to  avoid 
any  commotion,  a  company  of  soldiers  was 
exercised  in  front  of  the -door.  Gaspard  de 
Pons,  an  officer  of  the  Royal  Guard,  and  Al- 
fred de  Vigny  were  Hugo's  seconds.  In  the 
second  round  he  received  a  deepish  sword- 
cut  in  his  left  arm  below  the  shoulder. 
When  the  guardsman  was  informed  that  he 
had  wounded  "1'enfant  sublime,"  his  con- 
sternation was  great,  and  he  declared : 

"If  I  had  known  who  he  was,  I  would 
have  let  him  run  me  through  the  body." 

It  took  a  fortnight  for  the  wound  to  heal, 
and  the  poet  applied  himself  afresh  to  his 
labors. 

His  prospects  could  not  be  considered 
brilliant.  As  already  mentioned,  his  allow- 
ance from  his  father  had  been  withdrawn, 
and  he.  was  solely  dependent  on  his  own  ex- 
ertions. His  indomitable  spirit,  however, 
and  his  undaunted  confidence  in  the  fut- 
ure, supported  him  through  all  his  season 
of  poverty,  and,  with  the  utmost  fortitude, 
he  underwent  that  fine  but  trying  ordeal 
from  which  "  the  weak  emerge  infamous,  the 
strong  sublime." 

The  account,  written  long  afterwards,  of 
the  early  years  of  Marius  in  "Les  Misera- 
bles "  may  be  accepted  as  by  no  means  an 
inaccurate  description  of  this  period  of  his 
life.  In  his  own  wonderfully  graphic  lan- 
guage he  there  describes  how  the  young 
man  swept  out  his  own  landing,  how  he 
would  buy  a  pennyworth  of  cheese  at  the 
grocer's,  waiting  till  dusk  to  creep  out  to  the 
baker's  to  get  a  loaf  of  bread,  with  which  he 
would  slink  home  as  furtively  as  if  he  had 
stolen  it;  how,  carrying  his  book  under  his 
arm,  he  would  surreptitiously  make  his  way 
to  the  butcher's  at  the  corner,  and,  after  be- 
ing elbowed  and  jeered  at  by  a  lot  of  ser- 
vant-girls, till  he  felt  the  sweat  standing  on 
his  forehead,  he  would  take  off  his  hat  to 
the  astonished  butcher  and  his  shopboy  and 
ask  for  a  mutton  cutlet,  with  which  he 
would  go  off  to  cook  it  for  himself,  and  to 
make  it  last  for  at  least  three  days. 

For  a  whole  year  he  lived  on  seven  hun- 
dred francs,  which  were  the  proceeds  of  his 
pamphlets  and  the  article's  in  the  Conserva- 
teur.  But  at  length,  acting  on  his  brother's 


62 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  Ulti   TIME. 


advice,  he  determined  to  collect  his  odes  and 
issue  them  in  a  single  volume.  Lamartine's 
"Meditations  " had  been  published  two  years 
previously,  and  he  was  sanguine  of  a  similar 
success  for  his  own  venture. 

This  first  volume  of  the  "Odes  et  Bal- 
lades "  was  printed  by  Guiraudet  in  the  Rue 
Saint-Honore,  and  published  by  Pelicier,  245 
Place  du  Palais  Royal.  In  its  exterior  it  had 
nothing  to  recommend  it  to  the  connoisseur 
in  books,  the  paper  being  bad,  and  the  print- 
ing vile. 

The  volume  was,  in  truth,  the  book  of  the 
author's  youth. 

The  first  edition  contains  some  pieces  that 
were  afterwards  suppressed — "Raymond 
d'Assoli,"  an  elegy;  "  Les  Derniers  Bardes," 
a  poem ;  and  an  "  Idylle,"  being  a  dialogue  be- 
tween an  old  and  a  young  man.  The  last  of 
these  has  been  introduced  into  the  third  vol- 
ume of  the  "  Annales  Romantiques"  under 
the  title  of  "Les  Deux  Ages." 

Not  only  in  Paris,  but  in  the  country,  the 
book  made  a  considerable  sensation;  fresh 
editions  had  to  be  brought  out  year  by  year. 
That  issued  in  1829,  on  the  page  facing 
"L'Ode  a  la  Colonne,"  contains  a  curious 
portrait  of  Hugo  in  a  long  frock-coat,  loung- 
ing with  his  elbows  on  a  sofa  cushion;  on 
the  right,  in  a  prismatic  ray,  stands  the  Ven- 
dome  Column  with  a  group  of  eagles  hover- 
ing over  it;  on  the  ground  lie  some  papers 
and  a  terrestrial  globe. 

It  would  be  too  long  a  task  to  enumerate 
all  the  editions  of  the  work.  Its  immediate 
effect  was  to  bring  the  author  into  promi- 
nence, and,  as  a  consequence  of  its  success, 
there  were  some  who  endeavored  to  stir  up 
Lamartine's  jealousy  against  a  writer  who 
had  risen  to  such  popularity.  It  is  impossi- 
ble to  judge  whether  Lamartine  was  sincere 
in  his  protestations  that  he  entertained  no 
feeling  of  the  kind ;  but  it  is  at  least  certain 
that,  notwithstanding  their  wide  difference 
of  style  and  subsequent  divergence  of  opin- 
ion, no  one  ever  succeeded  in  bringing  to 
open  variance  the  two  great  men  that  seemed 
born  to  understand  and  respect  each  other. 
Envy  is  a  sentiment  that  never  for  a  mo- 
ment found  an  entrance  into  Victor  Hugo's 
lofty  soul. 

There  is  no  need  to  conceal  that  the  "  Odes 
et  Ballades  "  present  many  ideas  that  would 
find  no  approval  now;  but  the  poet,  never- 
theless, has  declared  that  he  could  proudly 
and  conscientiously  place  them  side  by  side 
with  the  democratical  books  and  poems  of  his 


matured  manhood.  This,  he  says,  he  should 
be  prepared  to  do  because,  in  the  fierce 
strife  against  early  prejudices  imbibed  with 
a  mother's  milk,  and  in  the  slow,  rough  as- 
cent from  the  false  to  the  true,  which,  to  a 
certain  extent,  makes  up  the  substance  of 
every  man's  life,  and  causes  the  development 
of  his  conscience  to  be  the  type  of  human 
progress  in  general,  each  step  so  taken  rep- 
resents some  material  sacrifice  to  moral  ad- 
vancement, some  interest  abandoned,  some 
vanity  eschewed,  some  worldly  benefit  re- 
nounced— nay,  perhaps  some  risk  of  home  or 
even  life  incurred. 

Victor  Hugo  is  all  the  more  justified  in 
being  proud  of  these  productions  when  it  is 
considered  that,  only  twenty  years  old,  and 
not  yet  an  object  of  envy,  he  was  so  ap- 
plauded by  the  best  critics  of  the  time,  and 
so  patronized  by  the  chief  personages  of  the 
Restoration,  that  he  could  easily  have  turn- 
ed his  position  into  a  source  of  profit.  The 
royalist  party  then  in  power  was  in  urgent 
need  of  rising  men,  not  simply  of  talent  and 
energy,  but  of  high  character 

The  poet,  however,  was  faithful  to  his  love 
of  art.  His  dreams  were  of  a  glorious  fut- 
ure; and  although  his  prosperity  appeared 
for  the  time  to  depend  upon  compliance 
with  the  temptation  held  out  to  him,  and 
notwithstanding  that  the  poverty  with  which 
he  was  struggling  was  the  sole  obstacle  to 
his  marriage,  he  would  not  for  a  moment 
lend  his  ear  to  any  of  the  solicitations  with 
which  he  was  plied.  He  kept  aloof  from 
all  intrigue,  and,  unabashed  by  his  restricted 
circumstances,  he  held  his  head  erect  and 
maintained  the  moral  dignity  that  was  his 
rule  of  life. 

To  him  poetry  was  too  dear  to  be  made 
subordinate  to  other  interests.  He  wished 
that  his  whole  soul  should  appear  in  his 
odes,  his  whole  imagination  in  his  ballads; 
and  from  the  first  appearance  of  his  work  in 
1822  he  gave  indications,  not  to  be  misun- 
derstood, of  his  literary  aim. 

Although  but  twenty,  he  ventured  to  as- 
sert that  if,  during  the  last  thirty  years,  the 
French  ode  had  lost  much  of  its  power  in 
depicting  the  touching  and  the  terrible,  the 
stern  and  the  startling,  the  mysterious  and 
the  marvellous,  the  defect  was  not  to  be  at- 
tributed in  the  least  to  the  essence  of  the 
ode,  but  to  the  form  with  which  the  lyric 
writers  had  clothed  it. 

To  his  mind  it  seemed  that  the  chilliness 
and  monotony  that  pervaded  the  modern 


A  PROVOCATION. 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  MS   TIME. 


ode  were  to  be  attributed  to  the  superabun- 
dance of  apostrophes,  exclamations,  personi- 
fications of  inanimate  objects,  and  similar 
forms  of  vehemence  that  were  thrown  into 
them  with  the  effect  of  burdening  rather 
than  of  firing  the  imagination.  He  con- 
<  t-ivi  (1  that  by  placing  the  movement  of  the 
\ i  r>c-  rather  in  the  ideas  than  in  the  diction, 
by  having  one  fundamental  subject  as  the 
basis  of  all,  and  by  substituting  for  the  staid 
old  colors  of  the  heathen  mythology  the 
newer  tints  of  Christianity,  the  ode  might 
be  invested  with  something  of  dramatic  in- 
terest, and  so  be  constructed  to  utter  lan- 
guage that,  though  it  might  be  stern,  should 
yet  be  consoling. 

Here,  then,  was  the  first  declaration  of  war 
against  the  style  of  poetry  designated  the 
classical;  it  was  the  prelude  of  numberless 
battles;  but  from  that  day  forward  we  may 
recognize  the  goal  towards  which  the  poet 
advances  with  a  steady  tread,  resolved  to 
rear  a  flag  of  liberty  for  art.  For  this,  as  we 
shall  see,  his  efforts  had  to  be  unwearied. 

The  manuscript  sheets  of  the  "Odes  et 
Ballades"  are  covered  with  corrections;  the 
alterations,  some  of  which  are  noted  in  the 
final  edition,  consist  of  verses  entirely  re- 
written and  lines  frequently  revised  and  in- 
verted. In  the  ne  tarietur  edition  it  has  been 
deemed  inexpedient  to  reproduce  certain 
verses  written  in  the  author's  youth  which 
he  himself  when  a  man  subsequently  con- 
demned ;  he  found  it  hard  to  please  himself, 
but  wished  to  have  his  due. 

After  his  mother's  death,  he  remained  for 
a  short  time  in  a  small  room  in  the  Rue  de 
Mezieres,  but  afterwards  left  it  for  30  Rue  du 
Dragon  (formerly  Rue  du  Sepulcre),  where 
he  shared  a  couple  of  rooms  at  the  top  of  the 
house  with  one  of  his  cousins,  a  young  law- 
student. 

The  front  room,  which  looked  out  upon 
the  street,  served  as  a  parlor,  and  was  fur- 
nished with  a  table  and  a  few  chairs,  the 
prizes  gained  in  the  Jeux  Floraux  being  ar- 
ranged over  the  mantel -piece.  This  apart- 
ment opened  into  a  bedroom  containing  two 
little  wooden  bedsteads,  and  overlooking  a 
yard. 

At  that  time  the  young  author  had  only 
three  white  shirts  in  his  possession,  but  his 
scanty  supply  of  linen  did  not  prevent  him 
from  always  looking  scrupulously  neat.  Out 
of  his  little  capital  he  had  bought  a  bright- 
bhie  coat  with  gilt  buttons,  which  he  wore 
on  any  occasion  when  he  happened  to  dine 


out.  Not  caring  for  ordinary  amusements, 
he  endeavored  to  form  associations  that  were 
worth  cultivating,  and  was  invited  to  salons 
to  which  admission  was  not  generally  easy, 
and  where  he.  was  made  much  of.  Literary 
people  felt  that  they  were  doing  well  to  give 
encouragement  to  the  proud  young  poet,  who 
asked  no  assistance  from  others,  and  was  de- 
termined to  show  his  father  that  he  was  ca- 
pable of  maintaining  himself.  At  the  com- 
mencement of  the  century  it  was  the  wont 
of  polished  society  to  take  an  interest  in 
young  beginners  who  appeared  to  be  main- 
taining the  brilliancy  of  early  promise;  and 
Victor  in  this  way  formed  the  valuable  friend- 
ship of  such  men  as  Soumet,  Alexandre  Gui- 
raud,  Pichat,  Jules  Lefevre,  ISmile  Deschamps, 
and  Alfred  de  Vigny,  some  of  whom  would 
visit  him  in  his  garret,  and  listen  to  him  as 
with  his  thrilling  voice  he  read  his  first  su- 
perb strophes. 

The  first  edition  of  the  "Odes"  having 
brought  in  a  profit  of  700  francs,  a  second 
edition  immediately  followed,  and,  as  "it 
never  rains  but  it  pours,"  Louis  XVIII.  con- 
ceived the  idea  of  allowing  the  poet  a  pen- 
sion of  1000  francs  from  his  privy  purse. 
The  king  had  been  flattered  by  allusions  to 
himself  in  some  verses  to  which  his  reader 
had  called  his  attention ;  but  he  had  a  further 
reason  for  his  generosity,  to  which  we  must 
presently  refer. 

The  pension  came  at  a  timely  hour;  to- 
gether with  his  improved  resources.it  enabled 
Victor  Hugo  to  press  his  offer  of  marriage. 
For  some  months  he  went  to  reside  with  his 
brother  Abel  in  the  Rue  du  Vieux-Colombier, 
in  a  house  for  which  he  has  since  sought 
in  vain,  but  which,  as  far  as  he  remembers, 
was  by  the  side  of  the  quarters  of  the  fire- 
brigade. 

Hitherto  the  young  poet  had  had  but  few 
opportunities  of  seeing  his  fiancee,  their  in- 
terviews being  limited  to  a  weekly  visit  at 
her  father's  house,  and  some  rare  meetings 
which  Madame  Foucher  permitted  in  the 
Luxembourg;  but  at  this  period  he  spent  a 
whole  summer  with  the  lady  and  her  fam- 
ily at  Gentilly,  close  to  Bicfitre.  From  the 
house  was  a  view  of  the  verdant  valley  of 
the  Bievre,  where  with  happy  walks  in  lov- 
ing companionship  the  season  passed  joy- 
fully away  ;  for  the  future  all  looked 
bright. 

And  thus  there  came  an  end  to  the  sigh- 
ings  of  the  youth,  who,  in  his  letters  to  Adele, 
had  lamented  the  cruelty  of  fate,  and  de- 


THE  ROOM  IN  THE  RUE  DU  UKAGON. 
5 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


clared  that  patience  was  not  one  of  his  vir- 
tues. But  for  him  love  had  been  an  elevating 
sentiment;  it  had  raised  his  thoughts  above 
the  distractions  of  earth  by  associating  them 
with  a  higher  sphere;  such  love  cannot  fail 
to  bring  its  own  recompense. 

Victor  now  asked  his  father's  consent.  Gen- 
eral Hugo  had  some  little  time  previously  to 
this  contracted  a  second  marriage,  and  had 
retired  to  Blois;  he  had  begun  to  feel  a  cer- 
tain amount  of  confidence  in  his  son's  attain- 
ments, and  did  not  hesitate  to  accede  to  his 
request. 

Lamennais,  the  eminent  priest  destined  to 
be  a  convert  to  democracy,  and,  in  the  name 
of  reason,  to  reject  his  Catholic  creed,  to 
whom  the  young  poet  had  been  introduced 
by  M.  de  Rohan,  gave  him  his  certificate  of 
confession.  By  a  strange  coincidence  this 
priest  was  then  residing  in  the  old  house  in 
the  Impasse  des  Feuillantines.  Many  times 
in  letters  afterwards  quoted  by  Madame 
Victor  Hugo,  he  expressed  liis  esteem  for  the 
man  who,  in  his  advanced  years,  was  to  write 
"  Religions  et  Religion;"  paths  almost  paral- 
lel in  the  field  of  philosophy  seemed  to  lie 
before  the  two  mighty  intellects. 

It  was  without  any  application  on  his  own 
part  that  Victor  Hugo  had  been  assigned  a 
pension  by  Louis  XVIII.  The  poet  attrib- 
uted the  act  of  generosity  to  the  publication 
of  the  "Odes,"  but,  as  already  hinted,  there 
was  another  motive  in  the  background. 

In  1822  the  Saumur  plot  took  place.  Among 
the  conspirators  were  Berton,  Cafe,  who 
opened  his  veins  with  a  piece  of  glass,  and 
a  young  man  named  Delon,  who,  when  Vic- 
tor was  a  child,  had  often  shared  his  romps 
in  the  courtyard  of  the  Rue  de  Clichy. 

Delon's  father,  formerly  an  officer  serving 
under  General  Hugo,  had  been  the  informant 
in  General  Lahorie's  case,  causing  his  arrest, 
and  in  consequence  of  that  all  intercourse 
between  the  families  had  been  broken  off; 
but  Victor  had  never  forgotten  his  old  play- 
fellow, and  as  soon  as  he  heard  that  he  was 
in  danger  he  resolved  to  offer  him  a  ref- 
uge. 

He  wrote  to  Delon's  mother,  the  wife  of  a 
royal  lieutenant  residing  at  St.  Denis,  telling 
her  that,  although  he  was  himself  living  in 
the  Rue  du  Dragon,  he  had  a  room  at  his  dis- 


posal in  the  Rue  de  Mezieres.  "  Let  your 
son  conceal  himself  there;  my  devotion  to 
the  Bourbons  is  too  well  known  for  him  to 
be  sought  in  such  a  retreat." 

This  letter,  addressed  to  the  mother  of  a 
man  who  had  all  the  police  upon  his  track, 
was  unsuspiciously  put  by  Victor  into  the 
post.  Evening  after  evening  he  took  his 
stand  in  the  street  close  to  the  proposed  asy- 
lum, seeing  in  every  passenger  that  came  be- 
neath the  shadow  of  the  wall  the  friend  he 
thought  to  recognize;  but  Delon  was  far  too 
prudent  to  venture. 

As  might  have  been  anticipated,  the  letter 
had  been  conveyed  from  the  post-office  to 
the  council-chamber,  and  there  submitted  to 
Louis.  The  king  smiled  and  said,  "  That 
young  man  has  a  good  heart  as  well  as  a 
great  genius;  he  is  an  honorable  fellow;  I 
shall  take  care  he  has  the  next  pension  that 
falls  vacant." 

Such  was  the  real  origin  of  what  was  pre- 
sumed to  be  simply  an  act  of  royal  patron- 
age. 

The  letter  was  reclosed  and  forwarded  to 
its  address.  Had  Deloii  accepted  the  pro- 
posal, there  can  be  no  doubt  that  he  would 
have  been  arrested,  and  very  probably  he 
would  have  been  executed. 

At  a  later  date  Victor  Hugo  heard  this  ac- 
count from  the  postmaster  himself,  a  M. 
Roger,  who  aspired  to  be  a  dramatic  au- 
thor, publishing  several  works  having  no 
claims  to  remembrance.  It  was  a  joke  of 
the  period  that  "the  Academic  and  the  post- 
office  had  almost  made  M.  Roger  a  man  of 
letters." 

On  hearing  the  facts,  the  poet  rushed 
from  the  postmaster's  office  with  an  excla- 
mation of  horror  that  ever  his  pension  should 
have  been  awarded  as  the  price  of  blood. 

Delon  was  far  too  well  acquainted  with  the 
ways  of  the  police  to  listen  to  any  suggestion 
of  the  kind;  he  took  good  care  to  make  his 
way  abroad — but  henceforward  Victor  Hugo 
began  to  doubt  the  prudence  of  putting  con- 
fidence in  princes. 

Nevertheless,  at  the  tune  the  pension  so  far 
contributed  to  Hugo's  happiness  that  it  en- 
abled him  to  leave  his  humble  lodgings,  and 
to  accelerate  the  marriage  which  he  had  been 
contemplating  so  eagerly  and  so  long. 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


67 


CHAPTER   IX. 

The  Poet's  Marriage. — Illuess  and  Death  of  Eugene  Hugo. — General  Hugo  in  Paris. — His  Influence  on  Vic- 
tor  "Hau  d'Islande."— Scope  of  the  Work.— Its  Reception  by  the  Critics.— Charles  Nodier's  Approval. 

— Partisans  of  the  Book. — Drama  Founded  on  it. — Fortune  Smiles  on  the  Poet. — The  House  in  the  Rue  de 
Vaugirard.  —  La  Revue  Franfaise.  —Victor  Hugo's  Opinion  of  Voltaire  in  1824.  —  His  Observations  ou 
Lamennais,  Walter  Scott,  and  Byron.— Achille  Deveria  and  Louis  Boulanger. 


IN  October,  1822,  Victor  Hugo  was  mar- 
ried in  the  chapel  of  the  Church  of  St.  Sul- 
pice,  where,  eighteen  months  before,  he  had 
attended  his  mother's  funeral.  M.  Soumet 
and  M.  Ancelot  were  the  witnesses,  and  Al- 
fred de  Vigny  was  likewise  present. 

The  wedding  took  place  from  the  house  of 
M.  Foucher,  the  bride's  father,  who  still  re- 
sided in  the  hotel  of  the  War  Office.  There  it 
was  that  hospitality  was  first  provided  for 
the  young  couple,  whose  united  ages  were 
under  two-score,  and  who  started  in  life  with- 
out a  dowry.  The  bridegroom,  whose  entire 
fortune  consisted  of  800  francs,  had  presented 
his  bride  with  a  wedding-dress  of  French  cash- 
mere. The  cashmere  had  been  purchased 
from  the  proceeds  of  the  "Odes  et  Ballades!" 
Could  a  queen  boast  of  a  robe  of  more  costly 
fabric? 

The  breakfast  that  followed  the  religious 
ceremony  was  given,  by  a  strange  coincidence, 
in  the  hall  where  General  Lahorie  had  re- 
ceived his  sentence  of  death. 

In  that  giant  existence  of  which  we  are 
tracing  the  story,  sorrow  rarely  seems  to  have 
been  disassociated  with  its  joy.  A  terrible 
event  marred  the  brightness  of  the  occasion. 
The  wedding  breakfast  was  hardly  over  when 
Victor's  brother  EugSne,  who  for  some  little 
time  had  been  exhibiting  symptoms  of  over- 
excitement  of  the  brain,  was  seized  with  a  fit 
of  madness. 

This  young  man,  who  had  preceded  Victor 
as  a  poet — contributing,  as  has  been  already 
said,  a  number  of  articles  to  the  Conservateur 
Litteraire — had  given  tokens  of  considerable 
promise.  He  has  left  only  some  novels  and 
pieces  of  verse,  of  which  a  critic  has  re- 
marked that  ' '  they  are  types  of  his  own 
melancholy  fate ;  his  reviews,  too,  of  new 
work  and  dramas,  while  they  exhibit  intense 
conscientiousness,  always  express  any  cen- 
sure with  an  anxiety  which  seems  affrighted 
at  the  future."  He  was  endowed  with  an 
over-vivid  imagination,  and  his  natural  ten- 


dency to  melancholy  was,  in  consequence  of 
an  unfortunate  attachment,  aggravated  into 
a  morbid  madness.  Dr.  Esquirol  was  called 
in,  but  his  skill  was  of  no  avail,  and  in  a  very 
short  time  Eugene  succumbed  to  his  malady. 

General  Hugo  had  not  been  present  at  the 
marriage,  but  he  came  to  Paris  to  take  a  last 
farewell  of  his  second  son.  During  his  visit 
his  behavior  to  Victor  was  most  affectionate; 
and  whatever  differences  of  opinion  might 
exist  between  the  soldier  of  the  Empire  and 
the  son  of  the  Vendean  who  in  the  storms  of 
1793  had  saved  nineteen  priests,  all  seemed 
to  be  forgotten. 

In  a  letter  written  two  years  previously  to 
one  of  his  intimate  friends,  Victor  Hugo  has 
mentioned  how  one  day,  when  he  had  been 
enunciating  his  royalist  principles,  his  father, 
who  had  listened  in  silence,  turned  to  Gen- 
eral L ,  who  was  standing  by,  and  said, 

' '  Give  him  time ;  as  a  youth  he  holds  his 
mother's  opinions,  as  a  man  he  will  adopt  the 
father's." 

The  prediction  set  the  poet  thinking.  He 
could  not  fail  to  observe  that  young  men  on 
their  first  awakening  to  political  life  were  in 
strange  perplexity.  They  found  their  fathers 
hailing  Napoleon  Bonaparte  as  the  hero  who 
conferred  on  them  their  epaulets,  while  their 
mothers  only  saw  in  him  the  adventurer  who 
robbed  them  of  their  sons. 

The  same  letter  goes  on:  "Born  under  the 
Consulate,  we  children  grew  up  at  our  moth- 
ers' knees  while  our  fathers  were  in  camp; 
and  often  have  those  mothers,  bereaved  per- 
haps of  husband  or  brother  by  the  insatiable 
craving  for  conquest  of  a  single  man,  fixed 
upon  us  their  loving  eyes,  all  full  of  tears, 
and  thought  how  their  little  ones,  now  eight 
or  ten  years  old,  would  be  conscripts  in  1820, 
and  either  colonels  or  corpses  in  1825. 

"The  acclamations  that  greeted  Louis 
XVIII.  were  an  outburst  of  maternal  ecstasy. 

' '  Taken  altogether,  there  are  few  young 
men  of  our  generation  who  did  not  imbibe 


08 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


with  their  mothers'  milk  an  abhorrence  of 
the  two  tempestuous  periods  preceding  the 
Restoration.  In  1803  the  children's  bugbear 
was  Robespierre  ;  in  1815  their  terror  was 
Napoleon." 

Victor  Hugo  concludes  his  letter  by  ad- 
mitting that  experience  may  modify  our  first 
impressions  of  life,  but  insisting  that  an 
honest  man  is  bound  to  submit  all  such  mod- 
ifications to  the  rigid  scrutiny  of  conscience. 
For  himself,  indeed,  it  was  his  conscience 
that  he  always  consulted.  It  was  not  at  once 
that  he  renounced  the  hatred  for  the  conquer- 
ing despot  with  which  he  had  been  imbued; 
but  little  by  little  he  was  won  over  by  his  fa- 
ther's enthusiasm,  so  that  in  course  of  time 
lie  fulfilled  the  prediction  that  had  been  made 
about  himself,  and  proceeded  to  celebrate  in 
verse  the  armies  of  the  "chef  prodigieux," 
and  to  swell  the  honors  of  1'Arc  de  I'fitoile  as 
the  portal  of  victory. 

But  this  change,  though  in  a  measure  fore- 
seen, carried  with  it  its  own  fate.  Led  away 
for  a  time  by  what  seemed  great  issues,  he 
embraced  his  father's  views ;  but  his  con- 
science, enlightened  day  by  day,  soon  dictated 
quite  another  bias. 

With  the  indefatigable  industry  that  ap- 
pertained to  him,  Victor  Hugo  set  to  work 
immediately  after  his  marriage,  and  in  a  few 
months  completed  his  romance  "Han  d'ls- 
lande." 

The  first  edition  appeared  anonymously  in 
1823,  and  he  received  1000  francs  from  the 
sale.  At  that  time  it  was  quite  unusual  for 
young  authors  to  prefix  their  names  to  their 
works :  Lamartine's  "  Premidres  Meditations  " 
had  been  published  without  the  writer's 
name,  and  about  the  same  time  M.  Thiers, 
then  making  his  debut  in  public  life,  brought 
out  "L'Histoire  de  la  Revolution  Francaise" 
under  the  noin  de  plume,  of  Felix  Bodin. 

The  original  work  was  in  four  volumes. 
The  issue  of  these  was  temporarily  interrupt- 
ed because  the  editor  suspended  his  pay- 
ments, and  a  correspondence  was  opened 
with  the  author.  The  letters,  which  are 
somewhat  bitter  in  tone,  are  to  be  found 
partly  in  L'fidair,  a  "royalist  journal,  and 
partly  in  the  liberal  publication  Le  Miroir  of 
May,  1823. 

But  this  incidental  difficulty  did  not  pre- 
vent public  curiosity  being  keenly  interested 
in  the  book.  The  poet's  powerful  imagina- 
tion is  revealed  in  the  thrilling  situations,  the 
magnificent  descriptions  of  scenery,  and  the 
careful  historical  studies  that  the  story  con- 


tains; while  coincident  with  an  aggregation 
of  the  most  hideous  crimes  lies  a  charming 
picture  of  cha-tc  and  ideal  love. 

As  Victor  Hugo  has  himself  remarked,  it 
is  the  work  not  merely  of  a  young  man,  but 
of  a  very  young  man.  In  reading  it  one  is 
conscious  that  the  comparative  youth  who 
began  to  write  it  during  the  paroxysms  of  the 
fever  of  1821  had  as  yet  no  experience  cither 
of  men,  of  things,  or  of  truth,  and  was  only 
^•iii^Miig  at  them  all.  According  to  the  au- 
thor's own  estimate, "  Han  d'Islande  "  is  mere- 
ly a  fanciful  romance  in  which  a  young  man's 
love  is  the  one  object  felt,  and  a  young  girl's 
love  the  one  subject  observed.  It  is  his  own 
statement  that,  "afraid  to  trust  to  any  living 
soul  the  secret  love  and  grief  that  he  felt 
within  him,"  he  chose  his  paper  to  be  the 
confidant  of  his  spirit  in  the  hour  that  sepa- 
rated him  from  the  object  of  his  passion. 

Certain  parts  of  "Han  d'Islande"  bear  a 
marked  resemblance  to  the  style  of  Sir  Wal- 
ter Scott.  The  plot  turns  entirely  upon  the 
search  prosecuted  by  young  Captain  Ordener 
for  papers  that  will  save  the  life  of  Chancel- 
lor Schumaker,  the  father  of  Estel,  his  prom- 
ised bride  ;  the  main  interest  centres  in  a 
miners'  conspiracy,  In  which  the  old  man  is 
erroneously  supposed  to  be  implicated. 

The  hero  of  the  romance,  the  legendary 
Han  d'Islande,  is  a  monster  who  drinks  sea- 
water  and  blood  out  of  his  son's  skull,  and  is 
the  terror  of  the  Avhole  country-side.  With 
him  it  comes  about  that  the  captain  has  final- 
ly to  dispute  the  possession  of  the  documents, 
and  it  is  only  by  the  interposition  of  a  bear 
that  the  monster  escapes  becoming  the  victim 
of  Ordener's  fury. 

Received  by  the  critics  with  equal  aston- 
ishment and  irritation,  the  work  was  handled 
with  a  severity  that  almost  amounted  to  in- 
sult. On  the  other  hand,  there  were  men  o' 
both  judgment  and  talent  who  did  not  hesi 
tate  to  pronounce  in  its  favor. 

So  far  from  censuring  this  early  venture, 
Charles  Nodier  welcomed  it  with  enthusiasm. 
He  told  his  friends  that  the  unknown  author 
had  put  forth  a  marvellous  ideal  of  night- 
mare; and  he  wrote  a  long  article  in  the  Quo- 
tidienne,  in  which  he  observed  that  it  was 
characteristic  of  very  few  to  commence  only 
!  with  faults  voluntarily  introduced,  and  which 
they  already  knew  were  open  to  criticism. 
\  Delighted  to  see  any  one  break  a  lance  with 
classic  literature,  he  prognosticated  an  im- 
mense success  for  "Han  d'Islande,"  main- 
taining that  it  was  the  outcome  of  a  strong 


HAN  D'ISLANDE. 


70 


VI I 'TOIi   lll'UO   AM)   HIS   TIM  I-:. 


CHARLES  NODIKK. 

intellect  and  great  study,  and  that  it  was 
written  in  a  bright,  picturesque,  and  nervous 
style,  with  a  delicacy  of  touch  and  refinement 
of  expression  that  formed  a  striking  contrast 
to  its  wild  and  grotesque  play  of  fancy. 

Without  delay, Victor  Hugo  hurried  oil  to 
tender  his  thanks  to  the  kind-hearted  review- 
er. Nodier  started  with  surprise  at  the  rev- 
elation that  the  author  of  the  weird  and  ter- 
rible romance  was  actually  the  writer  of  the 
"Odes  et  Ballades;"  but,  on  recovering  from 
his  amazement,  he  gave  him  a  hearty  greet- 
ing, and  the  interview  was  the  commence- 
ment of  a  lasting  friendship  between  the  two. 

Another  partisan,  hardly  less  energetic,  of 
the  production  that  was  the  subject  of  so 
much  attack  was  Mery,  the  author  of  a  great 
many  charming  standard  books,  and  a  fellow- 
contributor  with  Barthelemy  to  the  Nemesis. 
After  a  series  of  singular  adventures  at  Mar- 
seilles, this  matchless  journalist  and  brilliant 
orator  had  just  come  to  Paris.  .  Conjointly 
with  M.  Rabbe,  who  was  then  writing  his 
history  of  the  popes,  he  asserted  in  the  Tab- 1 
lettes  Universette* that  "Han  d'Islande "  was  a 
meritorious  work,  in  every  way  deserving 
the  study  and  attention  of  the  public. 

After  thus  recording  the  praise  of  such 
men  as  Charles  Nodier  and  Mery,  we  may 
well  feel  ourselves  more  than  justified  in  ig- 
noring the  many  adverse  and  insulting  strict- 
ures of  certain  critics  of  little  or  of  no  au- 
thority. 

M.  Rabbe  himself  awarded  unbounded 
praise  to  "Han  d'Islande."  We  have  al- 
ready quoted  some  of  his  opinions  on  Vic- 
tor Hugo's  early  years;  he  was  his  devoted 


friend  and  his  biographer.  He  died  young, 
the  victim  of  a  disease  that  disfigured  him 
so  terribly  as  to  embitter  his  existence. 

In  spite,  if  not  in  consequence,  of  the  nu- 
merous fierce  attacks  upon  the  book,  there 
was  very  soon  a  demand  for  a  new  edition. 
In  a  humorous  preface  to  this,  the  author 
expresses  his  satisfaction  at  the  enormous 
success  of  his  work,  some  half-dozen  people 
at  least  having  read  it  from  beginning  to 
end.  He  tenders  his  acknowledgments  to 
the  fair  readers,  who,  he  has  been  informed, 
have  made  up  their  own  idea  of  what  the 
author  is  like ;  he  describes  how  flattered  he 
feels  by  hearing  that  they  have  invested  him 
with  red  hair,  frizzly  beard,  and  haggard 
eyes;  he  is  overwhelmed  by  the  honor  they 
do  him  in  representing  that  he  never  cuts 
his  nails;  but  on  bended  knee  he  begs  them 
not  to  believe  that  he  carries  his  ferocity  so 
far  as  to  devour  little  infants  alive;  in  con- 
clusion, he  assures  them  that  he  will  do  his 
best  to  merit  their  kind  sentiments  by  striv- 
ing to  attain  the  high  renown  of  the  authors 
of  "Lolotte  et  Fanfan"  and  of  "Monsieur 
Botte." 

The  ir,ony  of  the  defence  conveys  some 
idea  of  the  virulence  of  the  attack.  The 
classics  declared  that  the  journals  in  which 
"Han  d'Islande"  got  a  chance  commenda- 
tion were  edited  by  bricklayers,  barbers,  and 
tinkers;  but  the  savage  critics  received  an 
unanswerable  rebuke  when  it  transpired  that 
the  booksellers  Lecointre  and  Durey  had  pur- 
chased the  second  edition  for  10,000  francs. 

Fortune  was  now  smiling  on  the  poet,  and 
the  young  couple  were  enjoying  what  to  them 
seemed  an  inundation  of  wealth.  About  the 
same  time,  too,  the  king  doubled  the  amount 
of  the  pension,  and  the  modest  household, 
which  had  hitherto  found  its  quarters  in  a 
small  residence  in  the  Rue  du  Cherche-Midi, 
now  shifted  to  a  more  permanent  settlement 
at  90  Rue  de  Vaugirard.  Nodier,  without 
any  ceremony,  accompanied  by  his  wife  and 
daughter  Marie,  attended  at  a  house-warming 
entertainment. 

In  recognition  of  his  devoted  loyalty,  as 
well  as  of  his  literary  attainments,  Nodier 
about  this  time  was  appointed  librarian  at 
the  Arsenal.  The  amiable  and  accomplished 
writer  managed  his  reputation  with  consider- 
able tact.  He  maintained  the  most  friendly 
relations  with  all  who  were  in  any  way  fa- 
mous during  the  great  literary  epoch  of  the 
Restoration,  and  throughout  his  life  was  al- 
ways surrounded  by  illustrious  society. 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


71 


At  the  time  when  Victor  Hugo,  who  called 
him  his  master,  was  becoming  the  leader  of 
the  new  school,  Charles  Nodier  kept  his  salon 
open  as  a  common  rendezvous  alike  for  clas- 
sics and  romantics,  for  royalists  and  liberals. 
But  his  preference  was  specially  for  the  au- 
thor of  "Han  d'Islande;"  as  he  was  one  of 
the  first  to  pay  his  homage  to  the  work,  so 
he  never  ceased  to  regard  the  poet  with  es- 
teem and  admiration. 

With  one  further  reference  we  may  con- 
clude our  notice  of  "Han  d'Islande." 

On  the  25th  of  January,  1832,  a  grand  melo- 
drama in  three  acts  and  of  eight  scenes,  found- 
ed upon  the  romance,  was  brought  out  at  the 
Theatre  de  1'Ambigu-Comique.  The  authors 
responsible  for  the  adaptation  were  named 
Palinir,  Octo,  and  Rameau.  The  music  was 
byM.  Adrien,  the  scenery  by  M.  Desfontaines, 
and  the  divertisement  by  M.  Theodore :  this 
last  consisted  of  a  village  fete,  and  could  not 
be  said  to  do  much  credit  to  M.  Theodore's 
powers  of  imagination. 

The  hero,  who  was  usually  attired  in  skins 
and  armed  with  a  hatchet,  chiefly  attracted 
attention  in  the  difficult  part  he  had  to  play 
by  the  loud  roars  that  signalized  his  en- 
trances and  exits.  The  utility  of  this  fanciful 
melodrama  was  not  altogether  apparent;  and, 
in  spite  of  the  excellent  intentions  of  the 
adapters,  the  original  plot  was  by  no  means 
left  intact.  One  peculiarity  very  much  com- 
mends the  piece  to  the  lovers  of  spectacle. 
M.  Montigny,  who  afterwards  became  the  in- 
telligent manager  of  the  Gymnase  Drama- 
tique,  doiibledthe  part  of  Han  d'Islande,  which 
had  been  created  by  M.  Francisque. 

It  would  have  been  an  oversight  on  the 
part  of  the  historian  to  omit  all  notice  of  this 
dramatic  curiosity. 

During  the  year  succeeding  his  marriage, 
Victor  Hugo  was  a  contributor  to  a  magazine 
called  La  Revue  Franfaise,  which  had  been 
started  by  Soumet,  Guiraud,  and  Emile  Des- 
champs.  The  review  was  but  short-lived,  but 
the  young  writer  gave  such  decided  proof  of 
his  knowledge  and  power,  his  literary  judg- 
ment and  his  fine  imagination,  that  every 
member  of  the  artistic  world  was  anxious  to 
make  his  acquaintance. 

Among  those  of  his  artist  friends  whose 
attachment  to  him  was  then  most  sincere, 
and  whose  belief  in  his  future  fame  was  most 
confident,  should  be  mentioned  Achille  Deve- 
ria,  who  drew  the  beautiful  vignettes  for  the 
early  editions  of  the  "Odes  et  Ballades," 
' '  Bug- Jargal, "  and  ' '  Hernani. "  By  this  large- 


hearted  and  talented  man,  the  truly  French 
art  of  illustration,  which  was  in  its  infancy 
in  1825,  was  developed  with  surprising  brill- 
iancy; and  it  was  by  the  help  of  his  singular 
skill  that  the  "  Bibliotheque  "  was  enabled  to 
set  on  foot  the  formation  of  a  collection  of 
engravings  on  a  scientific  and  practical  basis. 
His  pupils  were  his  brother  Eugene,  who, 
however,  did  not  fulfil  his  early  promise,  and 
Louis  Boulanger,  who  was,  as  a  painter,  the 
first  sincere  apostle  of  the  romantic  school. 
In  after -years  Louis  Boulanger  painted  a 
striking  portrait  of  Victor  Hugo,  who,  after 
thus  giving  him  his  patronage,  dedicated  to 
him  some  clever  verses.  Endowed  with  an 
imagination  of  which  the  fertility  seemed  in- 
exhaustible, this  leading  spirit  of  the  1830 
school  produced  some  brilliant  pictures  of 
scenes  in  "Notre  Dame  de  Paris"  and  "Lu- 
crece  Borgia."  Victor  Hugo  always  desig- 
nated him  his  painter  and  his  friend. 

But,  as  we  have  said,  in  the  early  days  of 
his  career  Achille  Deveria  was  the  most  in- 
timate of  all  the  poet's  companions.  In  1825 
the  two  families  met  nearly  every  day;  either 
Hugo  would  dine  with  Deveria,  or  Deveria 
with  Hugo.  It  would  not  appear  that  these 
repasts  were  by  any  means  worthy  of  Lucul- 
lus,  but  intellect  and  wit  gave  flavor  to  the 
viands,  merriment  and  laughter  supplied  the 
place  of  the  entremets,  and  gave  its  own  effer- 
vescence to  the  meagre  wine  that  filled  their 
glasses.  Even  to  his  old-age  it  was  an  inti- 
macy to  which  Victor  Hugo  could  ever  al- 
lude as  one  of  the  most  pleasing  associations 
of  his  life. 

About  this  time  Victor  Hugo  was  com- 
missioned to  write  a  notice  of  Voltaire.  This 
was  subsequently  reprinted  in  his  "Melanges 
de  Litterature."  Written  by  a  Catholic  roy- 
alist, the  eulogium  on  the  philosopher  could 
not  be  otherwise  than  very  qualified  in  its 
tone,  but  nevertheless,  in  spite  of  all  restric- 
tions and  prejudices,  and  after  asserting  of 
Voltaire  that  he  had  developed  and  aggra- 
vated the  latent  disorders  of  the  age,  Victor 
Hugo  renders  homage  to  the  marvellous  in- 
tellect of  which  as  yet  he  did  not  compre- 
hend the  full  power;  he  pronounced  him  to 
have  attraction  without  grace,  fascination 
without  charm,  and  brilliancy  without  'dig- 
nity. In  short,  it  is  plain  that  he  had  not 
yet  reached  the  point  when  he  could  proper- 
ly appreciate  what  Voltaire  was. 

Fifty -four  years  later,  at  Voltaire's  cente- 
nary, we  shall  see  that  he  held  a  very  differ- 
ent estimate.  Then  he  beheld  the  immortal 


72 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


author  of  the  "Essai  sur  les  Mceurs"  in  a 
finer  light;  he  glorified  him  as  one  "who 
had  waged  the  war  of  the  just  against  the 
unjust,  the  oppressed  against  the  oppressor; 
the  war  of  gentleness,  the  war  of  kind- 
ness, "and  lauded  him  as  one  "who  united 
the  tenderness  of  a  woman  to  the  fire  of  a 
hero,  a  being  of  noble  spirit  and  of  expan- 
sive heart!" 

These  differences  of  opinion  should  be 
brought  out  into  bold  relief  and  open  con- 
trast. Victor  Hugo  has  ever  been  ready  to 
recall  them,  in  order  that  he  might  frankly 
compare  them  as  illustrating  how  the  contra- 
dictions of  his  life  are  superficial  rather  than 
radical,  and  as  showing  by  what  secret  affini- 
ties ideas  that  are  apparently  divergent  may 
unite  themselves  in  one  central  thought  that 
gradually  detaches  itself  from  their  midst 
and  ultimately  absorbs  them  all. 

Although  in  the  critical  essay  of  1824  Vic- 
tor Hugo  had  thus  handled  Voltaire  rather 
severely,  he  had  nothing  but  unqualified 
praise  for  his  illustrious  friend  the  Abbe  de 
Lamennais.who  had  just  published  his  "  Es- 
sai  sur  1'Indifference  en  Matiere  de  Religion." 
In  reference  to  this  venerable  priest,  Victor 
Hugo  said  that  he  seemed  to  have  come  casu- 
ally in  contact  with  glory  to  mount  at  once 
to  the  topmost  heights  of  literary  celebrity, 
and  added:  "This  dignified  and  impassioned 
writer,  with  a  simplicity  that  is  magnificent, 
with  an  earnestness  that  is  vehement,  and 
with  an  intensity  that  is  sublime,  appeals  to 
the  heart  by  every  tenderness,  to  the  under- 
standing by  every  artifice,  to  the  soul  by 
every  enthusiasm.  .  .  .  He  has  been  assailed 
by  a  storm  of  reproaches  that  every  one  who 
makes  them  should  direct  to  his  own  indi- 
vidual conscience ;  he  has  made  all  the  vices 
that  he  would  expunge  from  the  human  heart 
cry  out  like  the  buyers  and  sellers  expelled 
from  the  temple.  .  .  .  We  have  heard  it  de- 
clared that  his  austere  temper  would  cast  a 
melancholy  cloud  over  human  life,  and  that 
the  gloomy  priest  wants  to  pluck  up  every 
flower  that  grows  along  man's  path.  It  may 
be  so;  but  the  flowers  to  be  plucked  up  are 
only  those  that  conceal  an  abyss." 

Only  a  short  time  before  issuing  this  glow- 
ing eulogium  upon  Lamennais,  Victor  Hugo 
had  written  a  critique  upon  Sir  Walter  Scott, 
in  which  he  gave  his  opinion  that  "  Quentin 
Durward  "  is  a  book  that  well  portrays  how 


loyalty,  though  its  representative  may  be 
young,  obscure,  and  needy,  is  certain  to  at- 
tain its  end  more  readily  than  perfidy,  even 
when  assisted  by  all  the  resources  of  wealth, 
power,  and  experience. 

Again,  in  June,  1824,  he  published  his  ideas 
of  Lord  Byron,  who  had  just  fallen  a  victim 
to  his  noble  ambition,  the  regeneration  of 
Greece.  The  poet  of  Prance  bears  magnani- 
mous tribute  to  the  talent  of  England.  He 
dwells  with  lofty  enthusiasm  upon  the  proud 
portals  of  Westminster  Abbey,  opening,  as  it 
were,  of  their  own  accord  that  Byron's  tomb 
might  dignify  the  resting-place  of  kings,  and 
he  bitterly  reproaches  Paris  for  having  cast 
contempt  upon  his  coffin. 

Byron's  school  at  the  beginning  of  this 
century  was  commonly  designated  the  Sa- 
tanic school.  With  reference  to  this  expres- 
sion Victor  Hugo  has  wittily  remarked  in  a 
note  that  the  literary  mots  of  a  period  may 
represent  not  so  much  the  character  of  the 
works  of  the  time  as  the  sentiments  of  those 
who,  often  unknown  to  the  authors  them- 
selves, have  had  the  leading  part  in  invent- 
ing them. 

The  article  upon  Byron  contains  some  im- 
portant paragraphs.  Although  the  author  of 
the  "Odes  et  Ballades"  at  twenty-two  years 
of  age  could  congratulate  himself  that  he  had 
formed  ties  of  friendship  with  not  a  few  of 
the  leading  spirits  of  his  day,  he  expresses 
his  great  regret  that  he  has  never  made  Lord 
Byron's  acquaintance,  and  applies  to  him  a 
touching  line  of  verse  which  a  poet  of  his 
school  had  addressed  to  the  generous  shade 
of  Andre  Chenier: 

"  Farewell,  young  friend !  my  friend,  though  never 
seeu ;" 

and  then  he  goes  on  to  declare  his  astonish- 
ment that  there  were  minds  capable  of  be- 
lieving that  the  literature  denominated  classic 
had  an  existence  still ;  he  maintains  that  the 
literature  of  ages  passed  away,  though  leav- 
ing behind  it  immortal  monuments,  has  de- 
parted with  the  social  life  and  political  ideas 
of  those  who  were  its  exponents. 

This  was  the  commencement  of  the  war; 
this  was  the  crossing  of  the  Rubicon!  The 
spear  was  now  poised  for  the  strife;  and  it 
becomes  our  task  to  recount  the  battles  from 
which  the  poet  came  out  triumphant,  bearing 
the  palm  of  victory. 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


CHAPTER  X. 

Journey  to  Blois. — Victor  Hngo  Made  Chevalier  of  the  Legion  of  Honor. — Coronation  of  Charles  X. — Visit 
to  Lamartine — Trip  Across  the  Alps. — Return  to  Paris — Proclamation  of  Literary  Liberty. — Birth  of 
Romanticism. — Wrath  of  the  Classics.— Literature  of  the  First  Empire — Revival  at  the  Beginning  of 
the  Present  Century.— Prelude  of  a  Great  War.— Caricature  of  a  Classic.—"  L'Ode  a  la  Colonne." 


"  I  SHALL  hope  to  see  you  soon  at  Blois," 
were  General  Hugo's  farewell  words  to  Vic- 
tor on  leaving  Paris,  whither  he  had  come,  as 
we  have  related,  on  the  melancholy  errand 
of  attending  Eugene's  death-bed.  The  old 
soldier  of  the  Empire  had  now  settled  in 
Blois,  and  was  living  in  complete  retirement, 
occupying  his  leisure  as  usefully  as  he  could. 

The  invitation  was  accepted,  and  the  jour- 
ney undertaken  in  April,  1825.  The  poet 
booked  three  places  in  the  Bordeaux  dili- 
gence, being  accompanied  by  his  wife  and 
by  his  little  daughter  Leopoldine,  whc.  had 
been  born  the  previous  year,  just  about  the 
same  time  that  the  new  volume  of  the  "  Odes  " 
had  been  published.  The  infant  grew  up  to 
be  a  charming  girl,  and  was  married,  but 
died  by  an  accident  very  soon  after  her  wed- 
ding-day. 

After  Victor  Hugo  had  set  his  foot  upon 
the  diligence,  he  was  hailed  by  a  messenger 
who  was  running  after  him  at  full  speed, 
having  been  to  his  house  only  to  find  him 
departed.  The  messenger  delivered  to  him 
a  packet  bearing  the  royal  seal,  which  turned 
out  to  be  a  patent  appointing  him  a  Chevalier 
of  the  Legion  of  Honor. 

The  circumstances  under  which  the  deco-. 
ration  was  conferred  have  been  related  by 
Alexandre  Dumas.  At  first  Victor  Hugo  and 
Lamartine  had  been  included  among  a  batch 
of  others  selected  for  a  general  promotion; 
but  on  the  list  being  presented  to  Charles  X. , 
he  struck  out  both  the  names.  The  Count 
de  la  Rochefoucauld,  who  had  himself  drawn 
up  the  list,  and  who  took  a  great  interest  in 
the  young  poet,  ventured  to  express  his  sur- 
prise at  the  two  most  deserving  of  the  names 
being  cancelled.  The  king  replied  that  they 
were  both  far  too  illustrious  to  be  included 
with  the  rest,  and  that  they  must  be  assigned 
a  special  promotion  by  themselves. 

During  his  journey  to  Blois,  Victor  com- 
posed his  ballad  of  ' '  Les  Deux  Archers. "  On 
his  arrival  he  flung  himself  into  the  arms  of 


his  father  and  joyfully  exhibited  the  papers 
which  he  had  received  at  the  moment  of  his 
setting  out ;  the  General  at  once  detached 
from  his  uniform  one  of  the  ribbons  that  he 
had  won  on  the  field  of  battle,  and  fastened 
it  with  his  own  hands  on  the  breast  of  his 
son. 

The  days  sped  happily  away  in  the  vet- 
eran's modest  dwelling  that  has  been  sketched 
by  the  poet's  own  pen. 

"  Its  roof  of  slate ;  of  stone  its  white  square  walls, 
On  which  the  green  hill's  slanting  shadow  falls  ; 
Though  to  the  roadside  somewhat  closely  placed, 
On  either  hand  by  smiling  orchards  graced ; 
. .  .  Here  doth  my  father  dwell ; 
Enjoys  the  ease  his  sword  has  won  so  well." 

The  visit  was  not  of  long  duration,  but  it 
served  to  strengthen  the  ties  of  family  affec- 
tion; not  that  anything  which  the  father  said 
could  wean  the  son  from  his  devotion  to  roy- 
alty. Victor  firmly  believed  in  the  liberal 
promises  made  by  the  successor  of  Louis 
XVIII.,  placing  every  confidence  in  the  new 
king's  assurances  that  not  only  was  he  anxious 
to  introduce  many  reforms,  but  was  prepared 
to  abolish  the  censorship  of  the  press. 

While  he  was  at  Blois,  Victor  Hugo  received 
an  invitation  from  Charles  X.  to  be  present 
at  his  coronation  at  Rheims.  Leaving  his 
wife  and  child  behind,  the  young  poet  started 
off  without  delay.  From  Paris  to  Rheims  he 
travelled  in  company  with  Charles  Nodier. 
The  incidents  of  his  journey,  which  occupied 
four  days,  have  been  related  by  Madame  Vic- 
tor Hugo,  and  therefore  need  not  be  repeated 
here ;  suffice  it  to  say  that  he  thought  the  cor- 
onation very  fine,  but  was  somewhat  shocked 
to  see  the  king,  according  to  custom,  bow 
down  in  the  cathedral  at  the  archbishop's 
feet. 

At  Rheims  Victor  Hugo  met  Lamartine. 
Both  poets  made  a  worthy  acknowledgment 
of  the  royal  invitation ;  the  one,  who  had  al- 
ready outvied  Chateaubriand  in  celebrating 
the  obsequies  of  Louis  XVIII.,  wrote  the 


74 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


"Ode  &  Charles  X.,"  while  the  other  com- 
posed the  "Chant  du  Sacrc."  They  ended 
by  becoming  thoroughly  acquainted,  and  La- 
martine  reminded  his  rival  of  a  promise  he 
had  made  him  to  go  and  see  him  at  St.  Point. 
Victor  Hugo  accordingly  arranged  to  pay  the 
visit  at  once.  Nodier  was  of  the  party,  and 
both  the  friends  were  accompanied  by  their 
families,  Hugo  stowing  his  little  daughter's 
cradle  in  the  post-chaise. 

Once  at  Marou  it  seemed  to  them  an  op- 
portunity not  to  be  lost  for  paying  a  visit  to 
the  Alps,  and  it  was  arranged  that  the  ex- 
penses of  the  trip  should  be  defrayed  by  the 
proceeds  of  a  book  in  which  they  would  all 
three  have  a  hand. 

A  book  written  by  Lamartine,  Victor  Hugo, 
and  Charles  Nodier  was  sure  of  success,  and 
a  publisher  was  soon  found,  but  unfortunate- 
ly he  fell  into  difficulties  before  the  work 
could  be  issued.  Victor  Hugo,  however,  had 
completed  his  portion,  which  contained  his 
impressions  and  experiences  from  Sallenches 
to  Chamouni.  Picturesque  and  attractive, 
full  of  episodes  that  are  striking  and  dra- 
matic, and  abounding  in  descriptions  equally 
accurate  and  vivid,  the  narrative  subsequent- 
ly appeared  in  the  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes, 
and  was  afterwards  re-edited  by  Madame  Vic- 
tor Hugo. 

On  his  return  from  this  trip  to  Mont  Blanc, 
the  poet  recommenced  his  literary  labors  in 
January,  1826.  In  a  preface  to  a  new  edition 
of  the  "  Odes,"  that  were  now  separated  from 
the  "Ballades,"  he  avowed  his  principles  of 
liberty  in  the  world  of  literature.  The  hour 
for  the  transformation  he  declares  has  ar- 
rived, and  proceeds  to  expound  his  creed. 

He  cannot  comprehend  why,  in  reference 
to  literary  productions,  he  hears  so  inces- 
santly of  what  is  called  the  dignity  of  one 
style  and  the  propriety  of  another,  of  the 
limits  of  this  and  the  latitude  of  that;  and, 
failing  to  understand  these  distinctions,  he 
considers  them  to  be  without  sense,  because, 
as  he  puts  it,  nothing  can  belong  to  the  good 
and  beautiful  unless  it  is  good  and  beautiful 
throughout;  the  works  of  the  intellect  must 
be  simply  good  or  simply  bad. 

"This  liberty," he  goes  on  to  say,  "need 
not  result  in  disorder;  liberty  need  not  be 
anarchy,  nor  can  any  originality  serve  as  a 
pretext  for  inaccuracy.  In  a  literary  pro- 
duction, the  bolder  the  conception  the  more 
irreproachable  should  be  the  execution." 

Such  statements,  prudent  and  pacific  as 
they  were,  would  not  now  be  construed  as  a 


declaration  of  war,  but  at  the  time  when 
they  were  first  published  they  extorted  yells 
of  wrath  from  the  partisans  of  the  old  liter- 
ature, who  still  preferred  to  drag  themselves 
along  the  dusty  paths  of  routine  and  imita- 
tion. 

Uy  its  birth  Romanticism  was  to  clear  the 
temple  of  Art  of  the  dealers  in  insipid  prose; 
and  the  classics,  aware  of  what  was  coming 
upon  them,  overwhelmed  the  innovators  with 
obloquy.  But,  in  spite  of  the  howls  of  the 
eunuchs  that  guarded  the  necropolis  of  Tra- 
dition, the  time  for  the  infusion  of  new 
blood  into  French  literature  had  now  arrived. 
Casting  aside  her  chains,  Art  was  to  rise  all- 
radiant  from  her  tomb,  and,  overturning  her 
dismal  guardians  with  one  blow  of  her  wing, 
was,  all-triumphant,  to  rise  aloft. 

It  can  hardly  be  imagined  to  what  a  de- 
gree of  insignificance  and  decay  French 
national  literature  had  sunk.  Under  the 
Empire,  the  voices  of  authors  had  been  sti- 
fled by  the  thunder  of  cannon.  To  Napoleon 
I.  poets  were  merely  men  who  made  fine  ar- 
rangements of  words,  and  were  useful  only 
so  far  as  they  sounded  his  praises.  Not  that 
the  great  emperor  had  any  actual  design  that 
letters  should  be  neglected ;  on  the  contrary, 
in  the  interval  between  two  campaigns,  he 
occasionally  gave  his  thoughts  to  their  re- 
vival. During  the  periods  of  his  armistices 
the  laurels  of  Louis  Quatorze  would  rise  be- 
fore him  as  a  vision,  and  he  would  have 
dreams  of  making  a  similar  name  for  his 
own  dynasty,  and  thus  adding  another  ray 
to  his  own  glory.  Having  ordered  Talma 
to  create  some  tragedies,  he  promised  him 
an  audience  of  kings,  and  was  as  good  as 
his  word;  but  Talma  was  not  successful  in 
anything  but  in  interpreting  the  classical 
cliefs-d'muvre  which  had  received  applause  in 
the  reign  of  the  Grand  Monarque. 

Bonaparte,  who  proscribed  Chateaubriand 
and  Madame  de  StaCl,  had  expected  to  be 
supplied  with  dramatists  in  the  same  way  that 
he  was  provided  with  his  conscripts,  little 
thinking  that  while  he  was  enlisting  300,000 
young  men  every  year  he  was  incurring  the 
risk  of  killing  an  indefinite  number  of  play- 
writers. 

Among  those  who  eluded  slaughter  because 
they  were  either  too  old  or  too  weak  to  be 
soldiers  should  be  mentioned  Alexandre  Du- 
val,  Baour-Lormian,  Mercier,  and  especially 
Raynouard,  who  was  the  most  illustrious  of 
the  imperial  authors.  To  these  may  be  add- 
ed the  celebrated  Luce  de  Lancival  and  the 


ROMANTICISM. 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS  TINE. 


great  Delrieu,  who  never  forgave  the  come- 
dians of  the  Theatre  Francais  for  always 
choosing  free  days  on  which  to  play  his  pieces. 
The  conqueror'*  1'aine  can  hardly  be  said  to 
have  been  much  enhanced  by  the  dramatic 
authors  of  his  day. 

other  branches  of  literature  were  repre- 
sented very  much  in  the  same  qualified  way. 
The  productions  of  the  intellect  were  gradual- 
ly becoming  more  marked  by  feebleness,  insi- 
pidity, and  insignificance;  and  it  seemed  as 
though  the  power  of  thought  had  departed 
from  the  human  brain,  and  that  wit,  imagina- 
tion, and  enthusiasm  had  ceased  to  exist. 

In  painting  too,  just  as  in  poetry,  there  was 
nothing  but  what  was  utterly  flat  and  com- 
monplace. But  the  young  generation  at 
length  was  aroused,  and,  waving  the  flag  of 
Romanticism  and  shouting  the  hurrahs  of 
independence,  they  rushed  forward  to  the 
assault  of  the  classic  citadel. 

The  word  "romanticism"  is  no  longer 
used  in  any  but  an  historical  sense,  and  only 
vaguely  expresses  some  ill-defined  doctrines; 
but  it  is  a  nom  de  guerre  implying  the  princi- 
ples of  a  party :  and  the  romantics  were  in- 
deed an  army  of  bold  and  valorous  cham- 
pions, elevated  by  the  love  of  their  art,  and 
ready  to  dare  every  conflict  in  order  to  secure 
the  triumph  of  their  instinctive  tendencies 
and  aspirations  towards  the  ideal. 

And  whence  sprang  this  Romanticism?  It 
appears  to  have  had  its  first  starting  in  Ger- 
many, towards  the  end  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury, by  the  political  school  of  which  Ludwig 
Tieck  was  one  of  the  principal  leaders.  From 
Germany  it  was  imported  into  .France. 

French  literature  has  never  lost  its  own 
distinctive  marks  of  originality,  but  at  various 
times  has  submitted  to  be  directed  by  foreign 
influence,  although  at  other  times  it  has  itself 
been  dominant  and  communicated  its  tone  to 
the  whole  of  Europe.  In  this  way  German 
literature  during  the  seventeenth  and  eigh- 
teenth centuries  had  been  very  much  the  mere 
reflex  of  the  French ;  but  at  the  beginning  of 
the  nineteenth  it  took  an  entirely  new  turn, 
receiving  fresh  life  and  elevation  from  Klop- 
stock,  Herder,  Schiller,  and  Goethe,  to  whose 
"Faust"  Madame  de  Stae"!  applies  the  saying 
that  it  treats  "de  omnibus  rebus  et  quibus- 
dam  aliis." 

But  still,  as  Philarete  Chasles  has  observed, 
between  France  and  Germany  there  has  ever 
flowed  the  Rhine,  and  the  credit  is  due  to 
Madame  de  Stael  for  having  brought  across 
this  boundary  the  German  literature  which, 


received  at  tirsi  with  a  cordial  welcome,  still 
bears  its  prolific  fruits.  To  that  accomplished 
lady  must  be  assigned  the  honor  of  natioual- 
i/.ing  among  t'1*  French  the  "romanticism" 
which  she  hervli'  describes  as  "the  poetry 
originating  in  the  songs  of  the  troubadours — 
the  offspring  of  chivalry  and  Christianity." 

If  this  definition  of  Madame  de  Stud's  were 
correct,  romanticism  would  have  to  be  regard- 
ed as  the  intellect  of  the  Romance  races  in 
conflict  with  the  intellect  of  classical  antiqui- 
ty, or  simply  modern  genius  in  antagonism  to 
the  Greeks  and  Romans;  but  in  reality  it  i< 
nothing  of  the  kind:  as  Victor  Hugo,  Champ 
fleury,  and  a  hundred  others  have  over  and 
over  again  affirmed,  it  means  nothing  else 
but  the  development  of  liberalism  in  litera- 
ture. 

At  the  time  when  Germany  was  commenc- 
ing the  grand  task  of  emancipation  in  the 
world  of  letters,  Byron  in  England  was  issu- 
ing the  poems  which  gained  for  him  the  dis- 
tinction of  "  the  satanic,"  and  which  by  their 
high  coloring  seemed  to  reveal  to  the  young 
sons  of  France  a  new  sphere  for  themselves, 
just  awakening  as  they  were  to  the  apprecia- 
tion of  Shakespeare,  and  beginning  to  dream 
of  originality. 

Simultaneously  with  Madame  de  Stael, 
Chateaubriand  was  contributing  to  the  revi- 
val in  France  by  the  publication  of  "Le  Ge- 
nie du  Christianisme,"  "  Atala,"  "Rene,"  a 
translation  of  Milton's  "Paradise  Lost,"  and 
"Les  Martyrs."  Flowing  as  they  seemed 
from  new  and  refreshing  springs  of  thought, 
his  works  had  the  effect  not  only  of  kindling 
admiration  for  the  Gothic  cathedrals  to  which 
they  referred,  but  of  inspiring  a  requickened 
love  for  Nature  in  all  her  phases. 

No  sooner  was  the  path  discovered  than 
a  multitude  of  the  young  were  ready  to  vent- 
ure themselves  along  it. 

"  When  it  is  remembered,"  said  Asselineau 
in  his  "Bibliographic  Romantique,"  "from 
what  point  this  generation  started,  and  when 
it  is  considered  what  it  has  replaced,  what  it 
has  reformed,  and  what  it  has  revived,  there 
are  not  praises  enough  to  be  found  for  the 
venerable  flag  that  it  has  defended — a  flag 
which,  torn  and  pierced  in  the  strife  of  bat- 
tles, ought  to  be  suspended  in  the  vault  of  a 
pantheon,  as  having  been  the  ensign  of  safety 
to  the  commonwealth  of  letters.  The  hands 
that  waved  it  were  victorious.  To  those  who 
carried  it  is  to  be  attributed  the  certainty 
that  romance  arose  and  shook  off  the  tame- 
ness  and  frivolity  of  the  last  century;  that 


VIC T OK  HUGO  AND  HIS  TIME. 


77 


there  was  the  issue  from  the  press  of  manly 
productions  such  as  could  be  read  and  lis- 
tened to  without  a  blush ;  that  the  drama  re- 
gained a  power  to  attract  and  an  energy  to 
thrill ;  that  verse  re-echoed  with  a  new  life ; 
and  that  prose,  resuscitated  from  the  torpid 
languor  of  the  academic  style,  begau  to  glow 
afresh  with  the  vitality  of  health.  To  their 
sincerity,  their  detestation  of  tediousness, 
their  sympathy  with  life  and  joy  and  fresh- 
ness, as  well  as  to  their  youthful  audacity, 
that  was  not  abashed  either  by  ridicule  or  in- 
sult, belongs  the  honor  of  securing  to  the 
nineteenth  century  the  triumph  of  liberty, 
invaluable  in  its  preciousness,  in  the  world 
of  art." 

Having  thus  exalted  their  victory,  Asseli- 
neau  proceeds  to  enumerate  the  stars  of  the 
literary  Pleiades.     Next  after  Chateaubriand 
and  Madame  de  Stafil,  he  recapitulates  the  I 
names  of  Victor  Hugo,  Lamartine,  Alexandra 
Dumas,  Charles  Nodier,  Alfred  de  Vigny, 
Sainte-Beuve,  fknile  and  Antony  Deschamps,  I 
Balzac,  Auguste  Barbier,  Georges  Saud,  The- 1 
ophile  Gautier,  Merimee,  Philar£te  Chasles, 
Alfred  de  Musset,  Jules  Janin,  and  Marcelline 
Yalmore.     Such  was  the  cluster  of  which 
each  individual,  in  his  turn,  was  branded  with 
the  epithet  "romantic." 

We  use  the  term  ' '  branded  "  advisedly,  be- 
cause at  that  period  whoever  was  disposed  to 
call  things  by  their  proper  names,  or  who- 
ever did  not  choose  to  make  his  verses  run 
two  and  two,  "like  yoked  oxen,"  was  re- 
garded not  only  simply  as  tasteless  or  shame- 
less, but  as  thoroughly  demented. 

"Romanticism,"  wrote  the  Academician 
Duvergier  de  Hauranne,  "is  not  a  matter  for 
ridicule;  it  is  a- disease  as  much  as  somnam- 
bulism or  epilepsy.  A  romantic  is  a  man 
whose  brain  has  gone  wrong;  he  is  to  be  pit- 
ied, and  should  be  reasoned  with  in  order  to 
bring  him  back  gradually  to  his  senses;  but 
he  must  not  be  laughed  at,  as  he  is  more  prop- 
erly a  subject  for  medical  diagnosis." 

This  is  a  specimen  of  the  way  in  which  the 
young  authors  were  treated  who  ventured  to 
brave  the  public  sneers  in  order  to  deliver 
that  public  from  poring  and  yawning  over 
books  of  the  familiar  stamp,  It  was  their 
aim  to  make  literature  cease  to  be  wearisome, 
but  it  was  by  no  means  an  easy  task  to  wean 
the  multitudes  from  a  style  to  which  they 
had  been  habituated. 

At  the  time  when  the  reform  was  being 
worked  out,  the  classics,  finding  themselves 
threatened  with  annihilation,  did  everything 


in  their  power  to  stir  up  the  wrath  of  the  pro- 
fessed disciples  of  order,  and  spared  no  pains 
in  holding  up  the  reformers  to  public  repro- 
bation. This  led  Victor  Hugo  to  declare 
that  if  the  romantics  had  been  thieves,  mur- 
derers, and  monsters  of  crime,  they  could 
not  have  been  exposed  to  severer  objurga- 
tions. 

It  may  well  be  supposed  that  the  poet  had 
no  great  affection  for  these  Philistines  who 
came  down  to  assault.  One  day  in  the  neigh- 
borhood of  Bingen  he  met  a  bear  that  had 
escaped  from  a  menagerie.  The  physiogno- 
my of  the  brute,  he  said,  reminded  him  of  the 
sleepy,  sanctimonious  expression  ever  worn 
by  the  old  habitu-es  of  the  theatres  as  they  sat 
listening  to  their  favorite  tragedies. 

Some  time  afterwards,  in  one  of  his  jocose 
moods,  he  scribbled  down  on  the  margin  of  a 
page  in  M.  Auguste  Vacquerie's  "Profils  et 
Grimaces"  an  off-hand  caricature  which  he 
described  as  a  portrait  of  a  classic. 

For  whom  that  portrait  was  designed  must 


Jf-  A   Attout. 


CARICATURE   OK   A  CLASSIC. 

(Drawn  by  Victor  Hugo.) 


78 


VICTOR 


AND 


77V/:. 


be  left  to  conjecture.  Perhaps  the  insolent 
old  fop  thrusting  his  thumbs  under  his  vest, 
while  he  sneers  as  he  expresses  his  detesta- 
tion for  "nebulous"  poetry,  is  Destigny  the 
satirical,  who  described  the  romantics  as  be- 
ing as  frantic  and  ridiculous  as 

"A  maniac  herd  from  Chareuton  escaped  !" 

Or  perhaps  it  was  Duvergier  de  Hauranne, 
or  the  renowned  Viennet,  who,  in  association 
with  Baour-Lormian,  was  one  of  the  most 
stubborn  of  the  antagonists  who  waged  war 
to  the  knife  against  the  romantic  party. 

Or  if  it  was  not  Viennet  that  Victor  Hugo 
meant  to  caricature  by  his  rough  sketch,  it 
is  possible  that  it  was  that  other  "immortal" 
who  called  the  romantics  swine;  or  it  might 
have  been  intended  for  the  famous  Nepomu- 
c£ne  Lemercier,  who  invoked  the  vengeance 
of  his  country  upon  the  works  of  the  new 
school,  and  thundered  forth  his  Alexandrine, 

"  Shall  Hugos  thus  unpuuish'd  verses  make  ?" 

However  erroneous  these  conjectures  may 
be,  it  is  at  least  certain  that  the  poet  amply 
avenged  himself.  But  this  is  long  past,  and 
he  has  done  better  than  that:  he  has  forgiv- 
en all  his  opponents,  and  no  longer  recollects 
their  impotent  and  ridiculous  outbreaks  of 
wrath.  • 

Such  were  some  of  the  preliminary  skir- 
mishes in  the  great  epic  struggle,  which  had 
its  heroic  as  well  as  its  ludicrous  side,  and 
which  terminated,  as  we  shall  presently  find, 
in  a  decisive  victory  for  Romanticism  and  its 
most  prominent  leader. 

But  while  Victor  Hugo  was  incurring  all 
this  literary  obloquy  he  was  also  alienating 
himself  from  the  sympathies  of  the  royalists 
in  consequence  of  an  incident  that  made  a 
great  sensation  at  the  time. 

In  February,  1827,  the  Austrian  ambassa- 
dor in  Paris  gave  a  soiree,  to  which  all  the 
most  illustrious  French  personages  were  in- 
vited. All  the  marshals  who  had  been 
raised  to  the  peerage  by  Napoleon  I.  at- 
tended the  reception.  On  their  arrival,  how- 
ever, the  ambassador's  usher,  acting  under 
instructions  given  beforehand,  omitted  all 
their  titles  and  announced  them  simply  by 
their  family  name.  Thus  when  the  Due  de 
Dalmatic  entered  he  was  introduced  as  M. 
lc  Marechal  Soult;  the  Due  de  Trevise  was 


announced  as  Marechal  Mortier;  the  Due 
de  Kaguse  as  Marechal  Marmont;  and  so 
on  with  the  Due  de  Reggio,  the  Due  de 
I  Tarente,  and  all  the  other  peers  of  the  im- 
perial creation,  although  in  every  case  they 
had  informed  the  usher  of  their  proper  rank 
as  noblemen. 

This  was  an  insult  to  the  whole  army  ; 
it  was  the  way  in  which  Austria  chose  to 
exact  her  vengeance  for  Napoleon's  victo- 
ries. The  marshals  retired  in  silence,  but 
the  circumstance  caused  a  deal  of  scandal, 
and  Victor  Hugo,  indignant  at  the  slight  put 
upon  his  father's  former  companions  in  arms, 
took  upon  himself  to  avenge  the  affront. 

He  immediately  wrote  the  "  Ode  4  la 
Colonne  Vendome,"  which,  like  many  oth- 
ers oi  his  political  poems,  was  printed  sep- 
arately. Glorifying  what  he  called  the 
monument  of  vengeance,  the  glistening  col- 
umn of  sovereign  bronze,  he  broke  out  into- 
a  strain  of  indignation  which  may  be  ap- 
proximately rendered — 

"  Though  grovelling  Austria  strove  to  tread  us  down, 
The  giant  strength  of  Frauce  has  trampled  oil  her 

crown ; 

The  pen  of  history  the  blazoned  truth  shall  spread, 
What  stands  engraven  on  her  vulture's  doubled 

head  : 

On  one,  great  Charlemagne's  all-crushing  heel; 
On  one,  Napoleon's  piercing  spur  of  steel  1" 

The  entire  ode  was  full  of  the  praises  of 
the  column  that  recorded  the  victories  that 
had  been  achieved,  and  upon  which  the 
stranger  should  gaze  in  silence  and  in  wonder. 
Its  wrathful  tone,  foreshadowing  the  writer 
of  "Les  ChStiments,"  at  once  brought  him 
into  suspicion  and  caused  him  to  be  accused 
of  deserting  the  Bourbons,  who  had  come 
back  to  France  in  the  train  of  Austria ;  and, 
in  truth,  for  a  time  he  seemed  as  if  he  were 
fulfilling  his  father's  prediction. 

So  indignant  was  Victor  Hugo  at  the  in- 
sult offered  to  the  valiant  marshals  that,  for 
the  moment,  he  appeared  to  be  altered  into 
another  man.  Regardless  of  any  animosity 
that  might  be  stirred  up  against  himself 
by  his  "own  party,  he  denounced  without 
mercy  the  intruders  into  his  country,  thus 
causing  himself  not  only  to  be  forsaken, 
but  traduced,  by  the  royalists,  and  at  this 
critical  hour  doubling  the  number  of  his 
enemies. 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS  TIME. 


CHAPTER  XL 

Le  C6nacle Appearance  of  Saiute-Beuve — M.Taylor. — A  Conversation  with  Talma. — "Cromwell."— Pref- 
ace to  the  Work.— Opposition  Provoked.— Analysis  by  the  Author— Various  Opinions— Death  of  Ma- 
dame Foucher.— Marriage  of  Abel  Hugo — Death  of  Geueral  Hugo. — "Amy  Robsart." 


AMONG  the  leading  critics  who  reviewed 
Victor  Hugo's  works  at  the  latter  period  of 
the  Restoration  was  Sainte-Beuve.  His  ar- 
ticles upon  the  productions  of  the  new 
school  brought  him  into  notice  and  obtained 
for  him  an  admittance  into  the  Cenacle,  a 
name  given  by  the  more  zealous  romantics 
to  a  club  that  they  had  established,  of  which 
the  author  of  the  "Odes  et  Ballades  "was 
the  ruling  spirit. 

In  their  enthusiasm  the  members  of  the 
Cenacle  looked  upon  themselves  as  ordain- 
ed apostles  of  the  new  art.  Their  efforts 
were  originally  centred  upon  a  magazine 
which  they  started,  called  La  Muse  Fran- 
$aise,  and  they  held  frequent  meetings,  the 
society  including  Alfred  de  Vigny,  Jules  de 
Resseguier,  fimile  and  Antony  Deschamps, 
Ulrich  Guttinger,  and  about  twenty  others. 
The  members  called  one  another  by  their 
Christian  names.  In  the  winter  they  met  at 
each  other's  houses  to  read  verses,  and  in 
the  summer  they  turned  out  in  a  body  for 
walks  in  the  country,  occasionally  mounting 
the  towers  of  Notre  Dame  to  admire  the  sun- 
set and  to  watch  the  parting  glow  of  day- 
light vanish  in  the  waters  of  the  Seine. 

After  the  fall  of  Chfiteaubriand,  the  Cena- 
cle was  virtually  broken  up.  Some  of  the 
members,  however,  persevered  in  holding 
their  meetings  until  the  time  when  the  ro- 
mantics claimed  an  undisputed  victory,  and 
Victor  Hugo  devoted  himself  to  theatrical 
labors.  Although  it  had  but  a  transitory 
existence,  the  society  was  like  a  beautiful 
morning  dawn;  its  atmosphere  was  all-radi- 
ant with  the  ardent  generosity  of  youth. 

In  his  "  Portraits  Contemporains  "  Sainte- 
Beuve  has  referred  to  the  charming  visions 
and  the  fruitful  labor  of  that  happy  time; 
and  in  his  "Joseph  Delorme"  he  has  dedi- 
cated some  laudatory  verses  to  the  young 
associates  of  the  club,  the  general  tone  of 
which  may  be  conjectured  from  the  con- 
cluding lines,  which  run  something  in  the 
following  strain : 


"  Both  good  and  great  they  were,  from  jealous  pas- 
sion free ; 
Nor  suffered  that  the  honey  of  their  verse  should  be 

Barbed  with  an  angry  sting ; 
Though  high  as  zenith -sun   their  fame,  and  all 

ablaze, 

It  ne'er  was  known  to  burn  with  scorching  rays 
The  tiniest  flower  of  spring." 

Previously  to  his  rushing  into  the  agita- 
tion of  the  romantic  fray,  Sainte-Beuve,  a 
critic  at  the  beginning  as  well  as  at  the  end 
of  his  career,  had  written  a  very  qualified  re- 
view of  the  "Odes  et  Ballades."  While  he 
allowed  that  the  author's  imagination  was  of 
a  first-class  order,  uniformly  deep  and  true, 
he  expressed  his  regret  at  the  frequency^ 
with  which  he  had  introduced  exaggerated 
similes,  prosaic  incidents,  and  over-minute 
analysis  into  the  most  brilliant  periods  of 
his  verse. 

Victor  Hugo,  always  ready  to  acknowl- 
edge that  whatever  he  wrote  was  open  to 
criticism,  felt  no  annoyance  at  the  review, 
but,  on  the  contrary,  soon  found  himself  on. 
very  friendly  terms  with  the  young  review- 
er, though  the  friendship  was  of  short  dura- 
tion. 

The  details  of  the  commencement  of  this 
amicable  intimacy  are  related  in  a  letter 
written  by  Sainte-Beuve  towards  the  end 
of  his  life,  and  which  has  not  been  gener- 
ally circulated.  He  writes : 

"I  knew  Victor  Hugo  before  the  publica- 
tion of  '  Les  Orientales.'  In  1826  and  1827 
I  was  critic  to  the  Globe,  then  under  the  edi- 
torship of  M.  Dubois.  Without  knowing 
anything  whatever  of  the  author  of  the 
'  Odes  et  Ballades  '  beyond  his  name,  I  was 
instructed  to  write  a  review  of  his  publica- 
tion. This  I  did  in  two  successive  articles. 
Victor  Hugo  called  to  thank  me.  It  turned 
out  that,  without  knowing  it,  we  had  been 
almost  next-door  neighbors,  he  living  at  90 
and  I  at  94  in  the  Rue  de  Vaugirard.  I  was 
not  at  home  when  he  left  his  card,  but  1  re- 
turned his  call  on  the  following  day,  and  we 
soon  became  acquainted.  I  confided  to  hi* 


80 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS  TIME. 


ears  some  verses  which  I  had  composed,  but 
which  I  had  hitherto  kept  a  secret,  fn-lini: 
that  the  Globe  was  rather  an  organ  for  criti- 
cism than  for  the  publication  of  original  po- 
etry. We  were  all  very  formal  then;  and  I 
was  formal  too;  for  all  the  world  I  would 
not  have  chosen  to  be  introduced  to  an  au- 
thor whose  works  I  should  have  to  review. 
At  that  time  I  was  every  inch  a  critic;  subse- 
quently there  came  the  period  whqn  the  fac- 
ility was  suspended  and  forgotten." 

This  last  avowal  of  Sainte-Beuve's  is  worth 
observing.  He  did  indeed  enter  enthusias- 
tically into  the  romantic  movement,  and, 
having  embraced  the  cause,  exhibited  him- 
self as  a  most  ardent  disciple,  outrunning  his 
master  and  exaggerating  his  style.  But  at  a 
later  date  he  changed  his  mind:  he  burned 
the  idol  he  had  worshipped,  and,  by  way  of 
excuse  for  having  joined  Victor  Hugo's  par- 
ty, protested  with  an  intolerable  vanity  that 
he  had  only  made  a  pretence  of  belonging  to 
its  ranks. 

The  occasion  will  subsequently  occur  on 
which  we  shall  be  called  upon  to  pass  a  se- 
vere judgment  not  so  much  on  Sainte- 
Beuve's  apostasy  from  the  cause  of  Romanti- 
cism which  he  had  espoused,  as  upon  the 
odious  ingratitude  of  the  man  who,  in  1827, 
after  making  Victor  Hugo's  acquaintance, 
sought  his  friendship  and  advice,  and  read  to 
him  both  "Joseph  Delorme"  and  the  "  Con- 
solations." 

About  this  date  it  was  that  Victor  Hugo 
first  began  to  turn  his  serious  attention  to 
the  stage.  Reform  in  poetry  might  be  said 
to  be  all  but  achieved,  but  reform  in  the 
drama  had  yet  to  be  accomplished. 

M.  Taylor  was  then  royal  commissioner  at 
the  Comedie  Francaise.  He  had  former- 
ly been  aide-de-camp  to  General  d'Orsay, 
and  had  retired  with  the  rank  of  major. 
From  that  time  until  the  end  of  his  long  and 
noble  career  he  devoted  himself  with  all  the 
ardor  of  his  energetic  nature  to  the  cause  of 
art.  Familiarized  with  the  freedom  of  Eng- 
lish literature,  his  mind  was  too  independent 
to  submit  to  routine,  and,  possessing  large 
ideas,  he  maintained  strict  impartiality  in  lit- 
erary pursuits,  and  to  him  is  due  the  honor 
of  having  procured  the  admission  of  the  ro- 
mantics to  the  stage.  He  inquired  of  Victor 
Hugo  why  he  had  not  given  his  attention  to 
play -writing.  The  poet's  answer  was  ready: 
"I  have  already  commenced  a  drama  upon 
Cromwell." 

The  only  performer  who  was  capable  at 


that  date  of  representing  Cromwell  was  Tal- 
ma. M.  Taylor  lost  no  time  in  inviting  him 
to  meet  Hugo  at  dinner,  and  the  poet  and 
the  actor  had  a  long  conversation  together. 

Talma  was  now  approaching  the  limit  of 
his  fine  career,  but  was  full  of  bitter  com- 
plaints of  his  profession.  Though  he  could 
not  withhold  a  certain  measure  of  admira- 
tion for  the  style  of  tragedy  in  which  he  had 
made  his  reputation,  he  had  always  longed 
for  more  reality  to 'be  combined  with  tin- 
wonted  dignity  and  decorum  of  the  parts  he 
had  to  play.  He  had  conceptions  of  kings 
who  should  be  human  as  well  as  regal;  he 
yearned  to  express  emotions  that  were  natu- 
ral rather  than  strained ;  he  wanted  new  sub- 
jects, but  when  he  asked  for  Shakespeare 
they  gave  him  Ducis,  and  left  him  no  me- 
dium for  gratifying  his  realism  beyond  what 
he  could  invent  in  his  costumes! 

He  proceeded  to  expatiate  on  his  position: 

' '  No  one  knows  what  I  should  have  been 
if  only  I  had  come  across  the  author  for 
whom  I  have  been  looking.  Without  his 
role  an  actor  is  nothing.  I  shall  go  to  my 
grave  without  acting  as  my  soul  would 
prompt  me  to  act.  M.  Hugo,  you  are  young, 
you  are  enterprising;  surely  you  could  de- 
vise a  character  adapted  to  my  faculty.  Tay- 
lor tells  me  you  are  writing  a  '  Cromwell. ' 
Cromwell  is  a  part  that  I  have  ever  longed 
to  play.  Tell  me  what  your  piece  is  like. 
I  am  sure  beforehand  that  it  is  out  of  the  old 
routine. " 

"I  should  imagine,"  replied  Victor  Hugo, 
"that  the  part  that  you  are  longing  to  play 
is  precisely  what  I  am  longing  to  write." 

And  the 'poet  proceeded  to  propound  to 
the  tragedian  the  ideas  that  he  afterwards 
expanded  in  the  preface  to  the  play. 

He  said  that  he  intended  to  claim  for  an 
author  the  right  to  submit  to  no  other  rule 
than  that  of  his  own  imagination,  and  to 
survey  everything  from  his  own  point  of 
view. 

"  There  are  three  epochs  in  poetry,"  he  as- 
serted, "each  corresponding  to  an  era  in  so- 
ciety :  these  are  the  ode,  the  epic,  and  the 
drama.  Primitive  ages  are  the  lyric,  ancient 
times  the  heroic,  and  modern  times  the  dra- 
matic. The  ode  sings  of  eternity,  the  epic 
records  history,  the  drama  depicts  life.  The 
characteristic  of  the  first  is  naivete,  of  the 
second  simplicity,  of  the  last  truth.  The 
rhapsodists  mark  the  transition  from  the  lyric 
to  the  epic,  as  the  romancists  make  the  change 
from  the  epic  to  the  dramatic.  Historians 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


81 


begin  to  exist  in  the  second  epoch,  critics  and 
essayists  come  to  light  with  the  third.  The 
characters  of  the  ode  are  colossal— Adam, 
Cain,  Noah;  those  of  the  epic  are  gigantic — 
Achilles,  Atreus,  Orestes ;  those  of  the  drama 
are  human — Hamlet,  Othello,  Macbeth.  The 
ode  contemplates  the  ideal;  the  epic  the  sub- 
lime; the  drama  the  real.  And,  to  sum  up 
the  whole,  this  poetical  triad  emanates  from 
three  fountain-heads — the  Bible,  Homer,  and 
Shakespeare. 

"  Society,  in  fact,  begins  by  singing  of  what 
it  has  dreamed,  then  proceeds  to  recount  what 
it  has  done,  and  finally  begins  to  paint  what 
it  has  felt. 

"  The  poetry  of  our  own  time,  therefore,  is 
the  drama,  of  which  reality  is  the  essential 
characteristic,  and  this  reality  is  the  resultant 
of  two  types,  the  sublime  and  grotesque,  which 
are  there  combined  as  they  are  in  creation 
and  in  common  life.  Poetry,  to  be  true,  should 
consist  in  the  harmony  of  contrasts,  and  every- 
thing that  exists  in  nature  should  exist  in  art. " 

With  much  elegance  and  perspicuity  Vic- 
tor Hugo  enlarged  upon  these  points.  Talma 
was  delighted,  nor  did  his  ecstasy  dimmish 
when  he  listened  to  the  various  quotations 
from  the  unfinished  play  which  were  read  to 
him.  He  promised  to  undertake  the  chief 
character;  but  he  died  a  few  months  before 
the  drama  was  completed. 

Thus  left  without  the  interpreter  on  whom 
he  had  reckoned,  Victor  Hugo  extended  the 
piece  to  seven  thousand  verses,  making  it  of 
a  length  which  precluded  its  representation 
on  the  stage,  but  giving  him  scope  to  work 
out  a  full  and  elaborate  study  of  one  of  the 
grandest  characters  in  history. 

Alphonse  Esquiros  has  remarked  upon  this 
point  that  we  seem  to  be  made  to  penetrate 
into  Cromwell's  inmost  soul ;  we  spy  out 
every  idea  that  crosses  the  brain  of  the  pro- 
tector of  the  English  commonwealth — that 
strange  genius,  that  curious  mixture  of  mag- 
nanimity and  meanness,  of  love  of  despotism 
and  love  of  liberty,  of  faith  and  hypocrisy; 
we  can  hear  him  pray,  or  laugh,  or  dictate  a 
death-warrant ;  we  can  probe  his  bleeding 
heart-wounds,  and  in  this  great  stroke  of  a 
master-hand  we  may  see  before  us — 

"  Cromwell  au  Attila  by  Machiavelli  made !" 

It  is  thus  that  the  power  of  dramatic  genius 
reanimates  the  form  of  the  departed  hero;  it 
initiates  the  multitude  into  the  secrets  of  a 
heart  that  had  great  aspirations;  it  explores 
a  human  soul  so  as  to  lay  bare  its  passions  in 


such  a  way  as  to  render  them  a  prolific  and 
attractive  source  of  edification. 

An  analysis  of  the  work  has  been  made  by 
Victor  Hugo  himself,  who  has  represented  its 
design  in  the  following  terms : 

"There  is  one  special  period  in  Cromwell's 
life  at  which  all  the  variety  of  the  phases  of 
his  wonderful  character  might  almost  be  said 
to  exhibit  themselves  at  once.  That  period 
is  not,  as  might  be  at  first  imagined,  the  trial 
of  Charles  I.,  full  of  terrible  interest  though 
that  crisis  was;  but  it  is  the  period  when  his 
ambition  made  him  eager  to  realize  the  bene- 
fits of  the  king's  death,  when  having  attained 
what  any  other  man  would  have  reckoned 
the  summit  of  fortune,  being  not  only  mas- 
ter of  England,  but  by  his  army,  his  navy, 
and  his  diplomacy  master  of  Europe  too,  he 
was  urged  onwards  to  fulfil  the  visions  of  his 
youth,  and  to  make  himself  a  king.  Never 
has  history  veiled  a  loftier  lesson  under  a 
loftier  drama.  In  the  earliest  stage  he  causes 
himself  to  be  solicited  to  come  forward;  the 
scene  commences  with  addresses  by  corpo- 
rations, by  cities,  by  counties;  these  are  fol- 
lowed by  a  bill  in  Parliament,  Cromwell  all 
the  while,  though  the  author  of  the  plot,  ap- 
pearing dissatisfied  with  what  is  being  done. 
We  see  him  hold  out  his  hand  for  the  sceptre 
and  then  withdraw  it ;  we  see  him,  as  it  were, 
wriggling  sideways  towards  the  steps  of  the 
throne  from  which  he  has  just  displaced  the 
representative  of  the  established  dynasty. 
But  at  length  he  comes  abruptly  to  a  de- 
cision; Westminster  is  decked  with  flags  at 
his  command;  the  platform  is  erected;  the 
crown  ordered  from  the  goldsmith;  the  day 
of  coronation  is  fixed.  But  then  comes  a 
strange  denouement !  On  that  very  day,  and 
on  that  very  platform  in  Westminster  Hall 
from  which  he  had  resolved  that,  in  the  pres- 
ence of  the  people,  the  soldiers,  and  the  Com- 
mons, he  would  descend  a  king,  he  wakes  all 
of  a  sudden,  as  it  were  out  of  a  sleep.  All  at 
once  he  has  become  alive  to  the  true  mean- 
ing of  a  crown:  he  asks  what  the  formality 
implies;  he  asks  whether  he  has  been  dream- 
ing; and,  finally,  after  agitating  the  question 
for  three  hours,  comes  to  the  determination 
not  to  assume  the  regal  dignity. 

' '  Whence  the  hesitation  ?  Why  this  change  ? 
Xo  contemporary  document  solves  the  mys- 
tery; but  so  much  the  better  for  the  poet, 
whose  liberty  is  more  complete,  and  who  is 
left  to  give  his  drama  the  latitude  which  his- 
tory does  not  refuse.  The  scene  is  unique, 
it  is  the  great  turning-point  of  Cromwell's 


VICTOR  JIUQO  AND  UIS  TIME. 


life,  it  is  the  moment  when  his  chimera  es- 
capes him,  when  his  present  demolishes  his 
future,  and,  to  use  an  expressive  phrase,  his 
destiny  turns  out  'a  flash  in  the  pan.' 

"Cromwell's  entire  soul  is  at  work  in  the 
great  comedy  that  is  played  out  between  Eng- 
land and  himself.  Such  is  the  man  and  such 
the  period  that  this  drama  aspires  to  depict. " 

The  piece  was  published  at  the  end  of  1827. 
The  preface,  however,  attracted  more  atten- 
tion and  excited  more  discussion  than  the 
poem ;  it  started  a  species  of  poetry  that  was 
altogether  new  in  its  form,  so  that  its  produc- 
tion may  be  reckoned  as  one  of  the  greatest 
literary  events  of  the  time. 

Not  that  the  poem  itself  was  at  all  wanting 
in  boldness  and  originality;  it  contains  many 
beauties,  and  the  verses  offer  very  fine  ex- 
amples of  the  sense  of  one  line  being  in- 
volved and  completed  in  the  next ;  but  the 
preface  was  nothing  less  than  a  startling 
manifesto,  in  which  the  rules  of  the  rising 
modern  style  of  dramatic  art  are  exhibited 
in  a  way  which  one  of  the  classic  critics  de- 
scribes as  "  pitiless." 

In  thus  making  a  statement  of  his  princi- 
ples, Victor  Hugo  offers  himself  as  a  cham- 
pion of  his  cause,  and,  by  arguments  as  solid 
as  they  are  brilliant,  overturns  the  frame- 
work of  the  system  which  would  detain 
every  line  of  thought  in  one  uniform  mould. 

The  point  upon  which  he  takes  his  stand 
as  a  reformer  is  this:  the  drama  is  a  mirror 
in  which  all  nature  is  reflected,  a  glass  from 
which  must  be  thrown  back  upon  the  vision 
everything  which  has  had  its  existence  in 
history,  in  life,  or  in  man. 

Art,  as  it  were  with  a  magic  wand,  turns 
over  the  pages  of  centuries  and  of  nature, 
consults  chronicles,  and  studies  to  reproduce 
the  reality  of  facts,  especially  the  reality  of 
manners  and  of  character.  Nothing  should 
be  neglected  or  forgotten. 

From  beginning  to  end  the  programme  is 
traced  with  the  vigor  that  was  already  char- 
acteristic of  the  powerful  intellect  of  the 
young  master-mind,  and  it  is  instructive  to 
remark  that  it  comprises  all  the  theories  that 
have  since  been  claimed  as  inventions  by 
those  who  profess  to  be  leaders  of  the  real- 
istic school.  Victor  Hugo  desired  that  no- 
tice should  be  taken  not  only  of  the  beautiful, 
but  also  of  the  ordinary  and  the  trivial,  every 
figure  being  restored  to  its  salient  trait  of  in- 
dividuality. As  we  have  said,  the  naturalists 
made  discovery  of  nothing;  they  simply  re- 
peated that  which  since  1830  has  been  ac- 


cepted as  a  recognized  rule,  an  author's  right, 
and  so  without  any  adequate  reason  they 
have  occupied  the  attention  of  the  world  with 
a  dispute  as  futile  in  its  issue  as  it  was  up- 
roarious in  the  mode  in  which  it  was  carried 
on. 

Long  before  the  time  of  these  wrangling 
contenders,  the  true  leader  of  the  romantic 
school  was  writing  that  the  proper  mission 
of  the  drama  and  of  the  dramatist  was  to  rep- 
resent nature;  Cromwell  should  be  allowed 
to  retain  his  grotesqueness,  Henry  IV.  should 
still  utter  his  oaths;  the  touches  of  weakness 
in  the  hero,  and  the  glimpses  of  humanity  in 
the  tyrant,  should  be  portrayed  with  fidelity; 
tears  should  be  mingled  with  smiles;  the 
hideous  placed  side  by  side  with  the  grace- 
ful; the  spiritual  brought  into  contact  with 
the  brutal,  and  this  solely  because  truth  de- 
mands it. 

Nor  was  this  all.  In  his  famous  preface, 
Victor  Hugo  goes  on  to  say  that  a  language 
can  never  be  at  a  standstill,  a  rule  to  which 
the  French  is  no  exception.  He  writes : 

"The  language  of  Montaigne  is  no  longer 
the  language  of  Rabelais,  as  that  of  Pascal 
is  not  the  language  of  Montaigne,  nor  that 
of  Montesquieu,  again,  the  language  of  Pascal. 
Individually,  as  being  original,  each  is  to  be 
admired;  every  epoch,  as  having  its  own 
ideas,  necessarily  has  its  own  words  to  rep- 
resent them.  .  .  .  Our  literary  Joshuas  may 
call  upon  language  to  stay  its  course,  but 
language  will  now  no  more  than  the  sun  be 
arrested  on  its  way.  When  languages  stop, 
they  die.  A  writer,  then,  may  safely  invent 
his  own  style ;  he  has  the  right  to  do  so,  but 
only  on  one  condition — he  must  write  well, 
for  Racine  contains  Vaugelas. " 

He  claims  the  same  liberty  for  verse  as  he 
does  for  prose.  To  Corneille,  to  Racine,  to 
MoliSre,  and  to  all  the  master-minds  of  the 
past  whose  names  were  brought  up  against 
him,  he  paid  the  most  respectful  homage; 
they  were  all  great  poets,  being,  as  Theodore 
de  Banville  has  rightly  designated  them,  giants 
of  superhuman  strength ;  but  it  was  by  genius, 
and  not  by  art,  that  they  produced  their  im- 
mortal chefs-d'oeuvre,  for  "so  far  as  it  was 
known  to  them,  the  art  of  versification  was 
so  utterly  bad  that,  after  having  hampered 
and  perplexed  them  all  the  days  of  their  life, 
it  was  never  of  any  service  whatever  to  their 
successors;  while, thanks  to  Victor  Hugo  and 
his  disciples,  the  instrument  that  we  have  now 
at  our  disposal  is  so  excellent  that  the  most 
illiterate,  when  once  he  has  learned  its  use, 


OLIVER   CROMWELL. 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  1US   TIME. 


becomes  capable  of  composing  verses  that 
should  be  fairly  good."* 

Finally, the  preface  to  "Cromwell"  repudi- 
ates two  out  of  the  three  unities  consecrated 
by  the  classics:  it  rejects  the  unity  of  place, 
as  being  absurd  and  in  contrariety  to  what  is 
probable;  and  it  discards  the  unity  of  time, 
as  being  ludicrous  because  it  limits  an  action 
to  a  period  of  twenty-four  hours.  One  unity 
alone  is  recognized — the  unity  of  action — ex- 
cluding the  other  two  simply  because  neither 
the  eye  nor  the  mind  can  properly  take  in 
more  than  one  idea  at  a  time.  The  same 
theory  was  held  by  Goethe,  who  acknowl- 
edged only  the  unity  of  comprehensiveness, 
"das  Fassliche." 

In  an  article  devoted  to  the  manifesto  in 
the  Revue  de  Paris,  Charles  Nodier  writes : 

"  Since  liberty  is  recognized  as  an  almost 
universal  benefit,  it  would  be  extraordinary 
if  liberty  were  to  be  withheld  from  the  im- 
agination, that  very  one  of  our  faculties  which 
it  affects  the  most." 

It  can  hardly  be  imagined  now  what  bit- 
terness and  polemical  spite  were  aroused  by 
these  assertions,  which  looked  like  attempts 
to  overturn  a  fabric  that  had  been  deemed 
eternal.  A  volume  might  be  filled  with  the 
mere  catalogue  of  the  pamphlets  and  feuille- 
tom  by  which  the  revolutionist  was  assailed. 
Never  did  malice  and  vituperation  find  a 
more  open  field. 

"These  fanciful  whims,"  patronizingly 
wrote  the  Gazette  de  France, ' '  have  no  stable 
basis ;  they  have  indeed  a  ludicrous  side  which 
might  be  amusing  if  only  they  had  any  talent 
to  back  them :  but  to  fight  with  giant's  strength 
is  indispensable ;  and  when  an  attempt  is  made 
to  dethrone  writers  that  entire  generations 
have  agreed  to  admire,  the  attack  ought  to 
be  made  with  weapons  which,  if  not  equal, 
ought  at  least  to  be  sufficiently  good,  and  to 
be  wielded  with  intelligence  and  not  in  im- 
potence. What  harm  can  be  feared  from 
any  who  write  like  tlie  author  of  tlie  preface 
that  we  are  reviewing?"  This  concluding 
sentence  suffices  to  exhibit  the  rage  and  ran- 
cor of  the  classics. 

Victor  Hugo  had  to  stand  against  a  perfect 
storm  of  such  banter  and  sarcasm;  but  vehe- 
ment as  was  the  assault,  he  was  quite  capable 
of  making  a  vigorous  defence. 

In  the  Globe,  a  journal  of  moderate  views, 
and  the  tone  of  which  was  then  regarded  as 
the  "juste  milieu,"  M.  de  Remusat  wrote  a 

*  Bnnville,  "Trait6  de  Po^sie  Fraiifaise." 


very  judicious  article,  in  which  he  repeated 
Voltaire's  opinion  that  the  dispute  between 
the  ancient  and  the  modern  is  a  question  still 
pending.  Other  newspapers,  more  coura- 
geous still,  openly  expressed  their  enthusiasm, 
and  the  preface  to  ' '  Cromwell "  became  a 
sort  of  watchword  for  the  young  men  of  the 
day. 

Theophilc  Gautier,  who  had  not  yet  allied 
himself  to  the  rpmantic  party,  was  furious 
when  he  read  the  vindictive  abuse  in  the 
small  classical  journals.  To  his  eye  and  to 
that  of  his  associates  the  preface  appeared  to 
stand  with  an  authority  as  supreme  as  the 
Decalogue,  and  its  enactments  to  admit  of  no 
reply. 

These  few  instances  may  serve  to  give  an 
idea  of  the  sensation  produced  by  the  work. 
It  was  published  by  Ambroise  Dupont,  and 
had  this  dedication: 

"To  my  father:  as  the  book  to  him  is  ded- 
icated, so  to  him  is  the  author  devoted." 

General  Hugo  had  left  Blois,  the  town  of 
picturesque  old  mansions  that  Victor  had  de- 
lighted to  sketch,  and,  having  been  restored 
by  the  existing  government  to  his  proper 
rank  and  honors,  was  now  residing  in  Paris. 
He  had  married  again,  as  already  said,  and, 
after  coming  to  Paris  to  be  present  at  the 
marriage  of  his  son  Abel  with  Mile.  Julie  de 
Monferrier,  he  had  made  up  his  mind  to  re- 
main for  some  time  and  enjoy  the  society  of 
his  children  and  grandchildren. 

Besides  his  daughter,  Leopoldine,  Victor 
Hugo  had  now  a  son,  Charles;  and  a  third 
child,  Victor  FranQois,  was  born  shortly  af- 
terwards. The  general  took  apartments  quite 
near  the  young  children,  so  that  he  might  see 
them  every  day. 

But  his  enjoyment  was  very  brief.  On  the 
28th  of  January,  1828,  Victor,  after  dining 
with  his  father,  was  called  up  in  the  middle 
of  the  night  only  to  find  that  the  general  had 
succumbed  to  a  fit  of  apoplexy.  Madame 
Foucher  had  died  only  a  few  months  before : 
so  that  sorrow  seemed,  as  ever,  to  be  an  at- 
tendant upon  all  the  poet's  seasons  of  rejoic- 
ing. 

The  general,  as  we  have  said,  besides  being 
a  distinguished  soldier,  was  a  military  author 
of  no  inconsiderable  repute.  In  addition  to 
his  historical  journal  of  the  blockade  of  Thi- 
onville,  he  left  a  treatise  on  the  means  of  sup- 
plying the  place  of  negro  slaves  by  free  la- 
borers. He  likewise  wrote  two  volumes  of 
memoirs  that  are  still  used  as  books  of  refer- 
ence, and  which,  according  to  Michaud,  are 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS  TIME. 


85 


put  together  with  much  clearness  and  preci- 
sion, and  contain  many  minute  details  con- 
nected with  La  Vendee,  Naples,  and  more 
particularly  Spain.  To  these  must  be  added 
a  romance  called  "L'Aventure  Tyrolienne," 


With  reference  to  this  work  on  fortifica- 
tion, it  is  said  that  a  foreign  government, 
having  been  apprised  of  its  importance  and 
merits,  offered  the  general  a  considerable  sum 
for  the  copyright,  but  he  indignantly  rejected 


AN  OLD  HOUSE  IN  BLOTS. 
(From  a  drawing  by  Victor  Hwjo.) 


which  he  published  under  the  noin  de  plume 
of  Sigisbert;  and,  finally,  he  composed  an 
elaborate  treatise  upon  fortified  places,  the 
compilation  of  which  occupied  a  great  deal 
of  his  time. 


the  proposal.  The  manuscript,  by  the  desire 
of  the  French  government,  was  handed  over 
to  their  keeping,  but  by  some  mismanagement 
of  the  administration  it  remained  buried  in 
some  forgotten  portfolio,  the  general  being 


VICTOli  ULGU  AM)   Ills    TIME. 


too  magnanimous  ever  to  make  any  com- 
plaint of  the  neglect. 

The  death  of  his  father  was  a  great  grief 
to  the  poet:  he  mourned  for  him  sincerely, 
and  sought  for  solace  by  renewed  application 
to  work. 

Before  resuming  the  story  of  Victor  Hugo's 
conflicts,  we  should  not  omit  to  mention  that 
a  piece  which  he  had  written  in  conjunction 
with  Soumet  was  loudly  hissed  at  the  Odeon. 
It  was  founded  on  Sir  Walter  Scott's  "  Ken- 
ilworth,"  and  was  named  "Amy  Robsart." 
Of  this  drama,  the  first  three  acts  had  been 
written  by  Victor  Hugo  when  he  was  only 
nineteen.  Upon  his  showing  them  to  Soumet, 
he  found  that  they  did  not  meet  with  his  ap- 
proval, and  he  gave  Soumet  permission  to 
alter  them  and  finish  them  in  his  own  way, 
bestowing  no  more  pains  upon  the  piece  him- 
self until  the  success  of  Shakespeare,  as  per- 


formed in  Paris,  put  it  into  the  mind  of  his 
brother-in-law,  M.  Paul  Foucher,  that  a  play 
combining  comedy  and  tragedy  might  prove 
acceptable  to  the  public. 

It  was  these  representations  of  Shakespeare 
that  had  induced  Victor  Hugo  to  put  forth 
many  of  the  statements  in  his  preface  to 
"  Cromwell;"  and  in  the  strength  of  his  con- 
victions he  handed  over  his  "  Amy  Robsart " 
to  his  brother-in-law,  Paul  Foucher,  as  an  ex- 
periment. Foucher  produced  the  piece  in  his 
own  name;  but  when  it  proved  so  complete 
a  failure,  Victor  Hugo  at  once  came  forward 
and  avowed  his  own  share  m  the  production, 
taking  the  responsibility  of  the  non-success. 

' '  Amy  Robsart "  was,  however,  never  pub- 
lished among  the  poet's  works.  Victor  Hugo 
gave  the  manuscript  to  Alexandre  Dumas, 
who  had  it  for  a  long  time  in  his  posses- 
sion. 


VIC T OH  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


87 


CHAPTER  XII. 

Conception  of  a  Great  Work. — Time  Occupied  in  Writing  "Marion  Delorme." — Reading  at  Deve>ia'8  House. 
— Sensibility  of  Alexandre  Dumas. — Didier's  Forgiveness. — Anecdote  of  fimile  Deschamps. — Competition 
of  Theatrical  Managers.— Censorship  of  Charles  X.— A  Royal  Audience.— Prohibition  without  Appeal.— 
The  King  Offers  Compensation — Refusal  of  the  Pension — M.  Taylor's  Perplexity — "  Hernani."— Report 
of  the  Censors. — Mile.  Mars  at  Rehearsal. 


MAINTAINING,  as  he  was  always  prepared 
to  do  most  thoroughly,  that  an  author  should 
remedy  the  production  of  a  work  that  proved 
a  failure  by  the  production  of  another  work 
and  a  better,  Victor  Hugo  applied  himself  to 
the  composition  of  "Marion  Delorme." 

This  drama  was  preceded  in  its  issue  by 
two  other  important  works — "Les  Orien- 
tales"  and  "Le  Dernier  Jour  d'un  Condam- 
ne."  Of  these  we  shall  have  to  speak  later 
on,  but  meanwhile  must  diverge  a  little  from 
the  chronological  order  of  the  poet's  produc- 
tions, that  we  may  dwell  upon  his  experi- 
ences as  a  dramatist. 

Thanks  to  the  liberal  influence  of  M.  Tay- 
lor, a  bold  experiment  had  been  made  at  the 
Theatre  Fran9ais  in  the  beginning  of  1829, 
and  "Henry  III., "the  fine  "romantic"  drama 
by  Alexandre  Dumas,  had  been  produced 
with  considerable  success.  It  was  at  its  first 
performance  that  its  distinguished  author  first 
made  the  acquaintance  of  Alfred  de  Vigny 
and  Victor  Hugo.  Victor,  encouraged  by 
the  success  of  the  play,  turned  to  its  fortu- 
nate writer  and  said, 

"Now  it  is  my  turn!" 

Immediately,  from  among  the  various  his- 
torical figures  with  which  his  mind  and  im- 
agination were  stored,  he  chose  the  charac- 
ter of  Marion  Delorme,  and  henceforth  lived 
a  while  with  her  image  ever  in  his  fancy, 
and  creating  the  characters  with  which  to 
surround  her. 

This  mode  of  operation  is  peculiar  to  great 
artists ;  they  do  not  take  up  their  pen  or  pen- 
cil until  the  persons  that  they  are  about  to 
call  into  being  have  assumed  a  definite  shape. 
As  Minerva  emerged  armed  from  the  head 
of  Jupiter,  so  do  the  heroic  offspring  of  the 
poets,  with  all  their  passions,  virtues,  and 
vices  fully  developed,  leap  forth  direct  from 
the  author's  brain. 

No  important  work  of  Victor  Hugo's  has 
ever  been  written  without  much  prelimina- 
ry thought.  The  manuscripts  of  his  finest 


verses  and  most  striking  scenes  exhibit  hardly 
a  sign  of  erasure  or  correction.  Obedient  to 
the  creative  faculty  of  the  master,  the  hand 
moves  easily  and  speedily  across  the  paper. 

On  the  1st  of  June,  1829,  rather  more  than 
four  months  after  the  first  appearance  of 
"Henry  III.,"  he  considered  himself  ready 
to  commence  writing  "Marion  Delorme." 
He  set  to  work  assiduously,  and  by  the  19th 
he  had  finished  the  first  three  acts;  on  the 
20th  he  began  the  fourth,  at  which  he  worked 
unremittingly  for  twenty-four  hours  without 
taking  either  food  or  sleep.  On  the  24th 
the  play  was  complete,  except  that  it  received 
a  few  finishing-touches  until  the  27th. 

Having  composed  his  "  Cromwell "  in  such 
a  style  that  it  was  impossible  for  it  to  be  rep- 
resented on  the  stage,  he  was  very  anxious 
now  to  construct  a  drama  suitable  for  per- 
formance. The  report  of  what  he  had  done 
was  soon  circulated;  and  he  agreed,  though 
not  altogether  without  hesitation,  to  give  a 
reading  of  his  drama  at  Deveria's  house. 

Every  star  in  the  literary  Pleiad  burned  to 
be  present;  accordingly  the  assemblage  on 
the  occasion  was  very  large,  including  Tay- 
lor, De  Vigny,  Emile  Deschamps,  Sainte- 
Beuve,  Soumet,  Boulanger,  Beauchesne,  Al- 
exandre Dumas,  Balzac,  Eugene  Delacroix, 
Alfred  de  Musset,  Madame  Tastu.Villemain, 
Merimee,  Frederic  Soulie,  and  several  others. 

The  piece,  to  which  he  originally  gave  the 
name  "Un  Duel  sous  Richelieu,"  was  much 
applauded,  and  Victor  Hugo  was  more  grati- 
fied than  if  he  had  had  an  audience  of  kings. 

Dumas,  ever  free  from  envy,  manifested  the 
greatest  enthusiasm.  He  afterwards  wrote : 

"I  listened  with  admiration  the  most  in- 
tense, but  yet  an  admiration  that  was  tinged 
with  sadness,  for  I  felt  that  I  could  never  at- 
tain to  such  a  powerful  style.  ...  I  was  sit- 
ting near  Taylor;  at  the  conclusion  of  the 
reading  he  turned  and  asked  me  my  opinion, 
and  I  told  him  that  I  should  be  much  mista- 
ken if  it  did  not  prove  -one  of  Victor's  finest 


88 


VICTOR  HUGO  AXD  lllti   TIME. 


compositions.  It  exhibited  all  the  qualities 
of  a  matured  mind,  and  none  of  the  faults 
of  youth.  ...  I  congratulated  Hugo  very 
heartily,  telling  him  that  I,  deficient  in  style 
as  I  was,  had  been  quite  overwhelmed  by  the 
magnificence  of  his;  and  if  I  could  have  at- 
tained to  his  style  by  the  sacrifice  of  ten 
years  of  my  life,  I  would  willingly  have  made 
the  surrender." 


ALEXANDRE  DUMAS. 

There  was,  however,  one  point  in  the  plot 
that  was  no  small  grievance  to  the  amiable 
Dumas;  he  could  not  feel  satisfied  that  Didier 
met  his  death  without  forgiving  Marion.  Me- 
rimee  and  Sainte-Beuve  joined  with  him  in 
requesting  that  the  restored  courtesan  might 
receive  pardon,  and  Hugo  acceded  to  their 
request. 

One  is  almost  tempted  to  call  it  an  unfort- 
unate alteration,  the  original  idea  being  so 
much  the  more  powerful  as  well  as  the  more 
logical.  The  love  that  is  deep  and  sincere 
may  pardon  ihe  offending  objects  upon  which 
it  has  been  lavished,  but  it  cannot  reinstate 
them;  the  only  pretext  that  Didier  has  for 
the  kind  of  forgiveness  that  he  bestows  is  that 
he  is  on  the  point  of  death.  He  knows  well 
enough  that  it  would  be  impossible  for  him 
to  live  again  with  her  who,  in  two  lines,  af- 
terwards suppressed  for  fear  of  shocking  the 
public  modesty,  says  that  she  is  ready — 

" .  ...  free  to  leave  my  naked  breast 
On  which  whoe'er  first  comes  an  hour  may  rest." 


He  knows  it  would  be  impossible  for  one 
bearing  the  honored  name  of  Didier  to  love 
a  woman  so  degraded  and  so  debased  ;  and 
he  knows,  moreover,  that  the  courtesan  is 
false  to  herself  when  she  exclaims, 

"  For  me  to  be  again  impure,  that  could  not  be  ! 
Nay,  though  thy  very  life  depended  upon  me. 
No,  Didier,  no  !  thy  quick'ning  breath  once  more 
Doth  all  my  first  and  fre*h  virginity  restore." 

It  might  be  true  that,  in  the  agitating  hour 
when  she  was  about  to  be  parted  from  a  be- 
ing that  she  passionately  loved,  she  would 
persuade  herself  that  she  felt  like  this;  but 
it  is,  after  all,  a  mere  delusion,  and  the  empty 
vision  of  desperation. 

The  poet  was  quite  justified  in  complaining 
that  these  four  lines,  as  well  as  the  other 
two,  had  to  be  sacrificed  to  the  susceptibility 
of  the  least  respectable  portion  of  the  pub- 
lic, who  ought  to  have  been  impressed  by 
their  artistic  purity,  and  to  have  been  capa- 
ble of  listening  to  chaste  words  with  chaste 
ears;  he  was  bound  to  write  what  he  felt 
Marion,  in  the  madness  of  her  passion,  would 
have  thought;  he  had  no  alternative  but  to 
make  his  language  an  echo  of  his  concep- 
tions. Genius  may  claim  its  own  rights. 

According  to  M.  Auguste  Vacquerie,  Mar- 
ion has  come  across  an  honorable  man  who 
is  seeking  a  paragon  of  a  woman,  and  she 
generously  undertakes  to  find  him  what  he 
wants.  So  far,  so  good.  But  as  the  attempt 
proves  a  failure,  Didier  would  have  been  a 
grander  character  if  he  had  remained  inflex- 
ible. It  is  only  the  scaffold  before  him  that 
can  account  for  his  clemency;  and  if  he 
could  escape  that,  what  could  possibly  hap- 
pen next? 

Penitence  can  never  restore  the  fallen  to  a 
condition  of  equality  with  the  unf alien;  it 
cannot  bring  back  forfeited  innocence.  No 
insult  should  be  offered  to  fallen  women; 
but  they  must  not  be  placed  on  the  same 
level  with  those  who  have  never  lost  their 
honor,  nor  should  their  eyes  be  dazzled  by 
the  hope  of  any  possible  recompense  for  their 
shame. 

Had  Marion,  in  spite  of  her  heroism  and 
her  repentance,  been  adequately  chastised  for 
her  lapse  from  virtue,  probably  much  of  the 
sentimentality  would  have  been  avoided, 
which,  although  now  exploded,  at  the  time 
caused  a  great  depravity  of  taste,  and  invest- 
ed the  "Dames  aux  Camellias"  and  the 
"Mimis"  of  Bohemian  life  with  an  interest 
that  they  did  not  deserve. 

The  sensation  produced  by  the  reading  of 


DIDIER  IN  "MARION  DELORME." 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS  TIME. 


"Marion  Delonne"  soon  spread  through 
Paris.  The  members  of  the  Cenacle  express- 
ed an  almost  unqualified  admiration  of  it 
wherever  they  went.  One  evening,  as  Emile 
Deschamps  was  passing  the  Theatre  Fran- 
cais,  he  saw  that  "  Britannicus "  was  an- 
nounced; he  shrugged  his  shoulders  and 
said, "Can  they  not  perform  something  bet- 
ter than  this  ?" 

After  the  reading  of  his  drama,  theatrical 
managers  flocked  to  the  young  poet's  house. 
The  first  to  arrive  was  M.  Harel,  manager  of 
the  Odeon.  Catching  sight  of  the  manu- 
script as  he  entered,  he  took  up  a  pen  and 
wrote  across  its  front  page,  "Accepted  at 
the  Thefitre  de  1'Odeon,  July  14, 1829."  Vic- 
tor Hugo  meanwhile  came  in  and  informed 
him  that  the  piece  had  been  already  pledged 
to  M.  Taylor  for  the  Comedie  Franpaise,  and 
that  the  character  of  Marion  was  to  be  un- 
dertaken by  Mile.  Mars.  Harel  left  the 
house,  but  not  without  insisting  upon  his 
own  claim  to  the  work. 

Two  days  later,  M.  Crosnier,  the  general 
superintendent  of  the  Porte  -  Saint  -  Martin, 
called  upon  him  as  the  representative  of  the 
proprietor,  M.  Jouslin  de  Lassalle.  Introduced 
to  him  in  the  salon,  and  never  suspecting 
that  the  beardless  young  man  was  the  au- 
thor of  whom  so  much  had  been  said  for 
years,  he  asked  him  whether  he  could  speak 
to  his  father.  Victor  replied  that  his  father 
had-  died  about  a  year  ago,  but  at  the  same 
time  he  had  no  doubt  that  the  visit  was  in- 
tended for  himself. 

M.  Crosnier  stammered  out  his  apologies, 
and  proceeded  to  explain  that  he  had  come 
to  bespeak  "Marion  Delorme  "  for  the  Porte- 
Saint  -  Martin.  Victor  Hugo  smiled,  and 
handed  him  the  manuscript,  to  show  that 
Harel  had  already  been  before  him,  and  that 
even  Harel  had  come  too  late. 

"Oh,  that's  all  nonsense!"  rejoined  Cros- 
nier; "you  can  never  tell  beforehand  where 
any  piece  will  be  performed.  Permit  me,  if 
you  please,  to  write  my  claim  below  Harel's, 
and  perhaps,  after  all,  it  may  turn  out  that 
the  third  comer  is  the  luckiest  of  all." 

The  signature  was  made,  and  subsequent 
events  proved  the  truth  of  his  prognostica- 
tions. Two  years  later  Crosnier  brought 
out  "Marion  Delorme "  upon  his  stage. 

Nothing  could  be  more  enthusiastic  than 
the  reception  of  "Marion "by  the  company 
of  the  Comedie  Franpaise;  and  in  the  course 
of  the  summer  the  rehearsals  were  com- 
menced. Mile.  Mars  undertook  the  role  of 


the  heroine,  Firmin  that  of  Didier,  and  Joan- 
ny  became  responsible  for  Naugis  and  Men- 
jaud.  Hardly,  however,  had  the  arrange- 
ments been  made  and  the  scenery  completed 
when  a  rumor  arose  that  the  censorship  was 
about  to  interfere  and  oppose  the  representa- 
tion. 

Ever  cringing  to  the  power  which  main- 
tained them  in  their  useless  office,  the  cen- 
sors alleged  as  a  reason  for  their  veto  that,  in 
the  fourth  act  of  the  play,  Louis  XIII.  was 
represented  as  a  ridiculously  weak  prince,  as 
cruel  as  he  was  superstitious,  and  that  they 
considered  such  a  character  might  provoke 
public  malevolence  and  lead  to  a  disparage- 
ment of  his  Majesty  Charles  X. 

M.  Taylor,  who  was  long  accustomed  to 
the  absurd  proceedings  of  the  censors,  had 
already  guessed  what  would  occur,  but  the 
poet  had  properly  refused  to  alter  an  histori- 
cal delineation  that  was  not  only  accurately 
true,  but  on  which  he  had  bestowed  such 
especial  care. 

Knowing  how  it  had  happened  more  than 
once,  that  by  taking  vigorous  action  mana- 
gers and  authors  had  contrived  to  elude  the 
talons  of  the  censorship,  and  recalling  the 
circumstance  that  Dumas'  "Henri  III. "had 
finally  been  sanctioned  after  having  been 
first  prohibited,  Victor  Hugo  determined  to 
go  and  see  M.  de  Martignac.  This  minister, 
whose  "liberal"  tendencies  were  hurrying 
on  his  downfall,  was  considered  a  friend  of 
letters  and  an  independent  statesman;  he 
had  been  associated  with  Scribe  and  Casi- 
mir  Delavigne,  but  did  not  see  his  way  to 
entertain  any  views  at  all  in  advance  of 
theirs. 

He  gave  the  author  of  "Marion  Delorme " 
a  very  frigid  reception,  and  maintained  the 
fiat  of  prohibition.  The  matter,  he  insist- 
ed, concerned  an  ancestor  of  the  king,  and 
none  but  the  king  was  entitled  to  give  a 
judgment  in  the  case. 

Pressed  by  M.  Taylor  to  urge  the  request, 
Victor  Hugo  asked  for  a  royal  audience.  Ac- 
cording to  the  indispensable  rule,  he  dressed 
himself  in  a  court-suit,  put  on  a  sword,  and 
thus  prepared  to  appear  in  the  presence  of 
Charles. 

After  a  long  wait  in  the  anteroom  at  St. 
Cloud,  he  was  conducted  into  the  audience- 
chamber,  and  entered  into  explanations  with 
the  king,  telling  him,  as  he  had  told  every 
one  else,  that  it  was  from  a  purely  artistic 
point  of  view  he  had  endeavored  to  depict 
Louis  XIII.,  and  that  his  representation 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


91 


could  not  in  any  way  concern  that  mon- 
arch's descendants. 

Charles  X.  was  at  this  time  mainly  con- 
sulting his  own  liberty  by  sternly  repressing 
liberty,  and  was  about  displacing  Martignac 
and  confiding  the  fate  of  the  throne  to 
Polignac  of  mournful  memory,  and  did 
not  conceal  his  sentiments  from  the  young 
poet. 

Victor  Hugo,  in  some  well-known  verses 
that  were  published  subsequently,  has  him- 
self described  the  interview  and  criticised 
the  motives,  alike  literary  and  political,  that 
led  to  his  application  being  refused  without 
power  of  appeal: 

•"  And,  curious,  seek  yon  now  to  know  the  thing 
Debated  thus  between  the  poet  and  decrepit  king  ? 
Their  conversation  on  a  contrite  Magdalen  falls 
Whose  chastened  love  her  former  purity  recalls ; 
Shall  Marion  still  her  degradation  feel 
Because  a  censor's  serpent -tongue  hath  bit  her 
heel  ?" 

The  king  hesitated,  and,  without  alluding 
to  the  moral  aspect  of  the  drama,  turned  his 
observations  to  its  political  bearing,  and  ex- 
pressed his  intention  not  to  allow  his  dead 
ancestors  to  be  disturbed  in  their  tomb,  con- 
fessing his  fear  that 

"Forth  from  the  drama's  scenes, 
As  from  a  sepulchre,  the  lurid  spark  might  break, 
And  all  the  fire  of  revolution's  storm  awake." 

He  went  on  to  avow  his  conviction  that 
there  was  far  too  much  liberty  everywhere 
and  in  everything,  and  protested  that 

"For  fifteen  years  the  dangerous  flood  has  held  its 

way; 

Now  must  the  dike  be  reared,  the  dangerous  flood 
to  stay  1" 

The  poet,  as  a  prophetic  monitor,  warned 
him  how 

*'  The  swelling  wave  of  time  resistless  ever  rolls, 
Nor  bridge,  nor  dike,  nor  dam  its  onward  rush  con- 
trols ; 

He,  He  alone,  who  can  the  raging  ocean  bind 
Can  check  the  mighty  progress  of  a  people's  mind." 

But  the  poet  warned  him  in  vain;  and 
just  as  vainly  did  he  remind  the  monarch 
how,  under  Louis  XIV.,  Racine  was  happy, 
and  Moli^re  was  free ;  yet  all  to  no  pur- 
pose. Charles  X.  had  arrived  at  that  time  of 
life  when  he  could  listen  neither  to  counsel 
nor  to  warning.  Still,  he  made  an  effort  to 
be  gracious;  he  made  an  apology  for  what  he 
was  doing,  even  while  he  persisted  in  pro- 
hibiting the  piece  from  being  performed  dur- 
ing his  reign. 

Anxious,  however,  to  conciliate  the  author 
-and  to  make  some  sort  of  compensation,  the 


king  proposed  to  raise  his  pension  from  2000 
to  6000  francs.  The  poet,  with  prompt  de- 
cision, declined  the  offer. 

This  refusal  on  the  part  of  Victor  Hugo  of 
course  immediately  aroused  the  wrath  of  the 
ministerial  journals,  all  of  them  being  ex- 
ceedingly indignant  that  a  man  of  letters 
should  have  the  conceit  and  audacity  to 
spurn  a  present  offered  by  a  sovereign's 
hand.  The  opposition  papers,  on  the  other 
hand,  highly  applauded  the  poet's  determina- 
tion, and  some  of  the  disciples  of  Romanti- 
cism paid  him  the  compliment  of  celebrating 
his  magnanimity  in  verse. 

Many  of  Victor  Hugo's  friends  employed 
their  talent  in  singing  of  his  future  glory; 
and  although  this  nineteenth  century  has 
suffered  their  names  and  their  works  to  be 
forgotten,  there  are  not  a  few  of  their  pro- 
ductions which  really  deserve  to  be  read  and 
remembered.  Such  are  the  names  of  Ernest 
Fouinet,  Dovalle,  Regnier  Destourbet,  Jean 
Polonius,  Ulric  Guttinger,  Drouineau,  Theo- 
dore Carlier,  Jules  de  Saint-Felix,  and  Ar- 
vers,  whose  magnificent  sonnet  survives  the 
general  oblivion.  Besides  these,  some  men- 
tion ought  to  be  made  of  Fontaney,  who,  on 
the  19th  of  August,  1829,  addressed  a  sonnet 
to  Victor  Hugo  on  the  subject  of  the  reject- 
ed pension,  which  long  enjoyed  much  popu- 
larity, as  being  one  of  the  most  perfect  ex- 
amples of  the  poetical  renaissance.  It  was 
found  on  the  margin  of  the  famous  Ronsard 
Album,  dedicated  by  Sainte-Beuve  to  the  au- 
thor of  the  "  Odes  et  Ballades." 

No  tribute  of  admiration,  however,  from 
brother  poets,  and  no  congratulations  from 
the  literary  world  in  general,  availed  to  pre- 
vent "Marion  Delorme"  from  being  a  pro- 
hibited piece.  M.  Taylor,  who  had  rested  all 
his  prospects  upon  it  for  the  winter  season, 
was  quite  in  despair.  "We  have  nothing 
else  in  our  portfolio,"  he  sighed,  reckoning 
as  comparatively  nothing  some  eight  or  ten 
pieces  by  Viennet,  a  ' '  Pertinax  "  by  Arnault, 
and  some  stray  productions  of  Delrieu  and 
Le  Mercier. 

"Never  mind,"  said  Victor  Hugo,  "we 
must  see  what  can  be  done.  This  is  only 
August ;  you  were  not  yet  about  to  com- 
mence rehearsing.  Come  to  me  again  on 
the  1st  of  October." 

M.  Taylor  did  not  forget  the  appointment. 
He  made  his  call  on  the  precise  day  that  had 
been  fixed,  and  the  poet  put  into  his  hands 
the  manuscript  of  ' '  Hernani. "  The  writing 
of  this  had  been  begun  on  the  17th  of  Sep- 


92 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  1IIS  TIME. 


tember,  and  the  drama  was  completely  finish- 
ed on  the  25th. 

Like  the  "Marion,"  it  was  received  with 
acclamations  by  the  company  of  the  Theatre 
Francais;  but  it  had  likewise  the  fate  to  fall 
foul  of  the  censorship. 

The  report  of  the  censors  has  been  discov- 
ered; it  is  signed  by  Baron  Trouve,  the  in- 
spector of  theatres,  and  by  Brifaut,  Cheron, 
Laya,  and  Sauvo.  Such  a  monument  of  stu- 
pidity is  a  rarity;  it  concludes  as  follows: 

"Our  analysis  has  extended  to  a  consider- 
able length ;  but  it  gives,  after  all,  a  very  im- 
perfect idea  of  the  whimsical  conception  and 
defective  execution  of  '  Hernani.'  To  us  it 
appears  to  be  a  tissue  of  extravagancies,  gen- 
erally trivial  and  often  coarse,  to  which  the 
author  has  failed  to  give  anything  of  an  ele- 
vated character.  It  abounds  in  improprie- 
ties; it  makes  the  king  express  himself  like 
a  bandit,  and  the  bandit  treat  the  king  like  a 
brigand ;  it  represents  the  daughter  of  a  Span- 
ish grandee  as  a  mere  licentious  creature,  de- 
ficient alike  in  dignity  and  modesty.  But 
while  we  animadvert  upon  these  flagrant 
faults,  we  are  of  opinion  that  not  only  is 
there  no  harm  in  sanctioning  the  representa- 
tion of  the  piece,  but  that  it  would  be  un- 
advisable  to  curtail  it  by  a  single  word.  It 
will  be  for  the  benefit  of  the  public  to  see  to 
what  extremes  the  human  mind  will  go  when 
freed  from  all  restraint." 

To  this  report  of  the  committee  Baron 
Trouve  added  a  note,  specifying  certain  cor- 
rections that  were  to  be  made : 

"1.  The  name  of  Jesus  to  be  removed  from 
every  passage  in  which  it  occurs. 

"  2.  The  words  '  You  are  a  coward  and  a 
madman,'  as  addressed  to  the  king,  to  be  re- 
placed by  a  less  bitter  expression. 

"  3.  The  verse— 

"  '  Tin  nk'st  thon  tbat  kings  to  me  have  aught  of  sacred- 
ness?' 

to  be  altered. 

"4.  The  verses  beginning  'a  vile  king'  to 
be  suppressed.  The  sentence  had  better  end 
with  the  preceding  verse,  '  A  king  thou  art, 
Don  Carlos,'  as  the  allusions  that  follow  ap- 
pear dangerous. 

"5.  The  two  lines  which  bear  so  harshly 
upon  courtiers  to  be  revised ;  the  court  being 
described  as  a  poultry -yard — 

"  'Wherein  the  easy  king,  solicited  for  food, 
Squanders  his  grains  of  grandeur  on  the  brood.' 

' '  6.  The  tirade  against  kings  to  be  removed, 
commencing — 


"  '  1'oor  fools !  nt  empire  aiming  with  proud  eye  and 
head  erect,' 

and  terminating  with — 
" '  Their  rule  the  dictate  of  tfce  necromancer's  art.' 

The  whole  passage  is  merely  a  paraphrase  of 
Frederic's  saying,  that  '  God  is  on  the  side  of 
great  armies,'  and  ought  to  be  cut  out,  if  only 
on  account  of  the  couplet  about  '  right '  and 
'  the  scaffold.'  The  idea  is  tolerable  enough, 
but  is  sufficiently  worked  out  in  the  preced- 
ing lines." 

The  entire  document  is  a  literary  curiosity, 
and  as  such  we  introduce  the  above  extract. 
The  censors,  of  whom  it  was  said  that  they 
only  escaped  contempt  by  ridicule,  had  their 
own  way,  and  the  poet  was  obliged  to  re- 
model all  the  condemned  passages  of  his 
play. 

M.Vitet,  afterwards  an  Academician,  and 
one  of  the  most  enthusiastic  admirers  of  Vic- 
tor Hugo's  acted  drama,  had  read  "  Hernani " 
to  the  minister  in  the  censors'  office.  When  he 
finished,  the  secretary  pronounced  the  piece 
"  excessively  stupid ;"  but  the  censors  did  not 
venture  to  prohibit  its  performance,  and  the 
rehearsals  proceeded  accordingly.  The  part 
of  Hernani  was  given  to  M.  Firmin,  that  of 
Don  Carlos  to  Michelot,  while  the  important 
role  of  Dona  Sol  was  assigned  to  Mile.  Mars. 

Carried  on  during  the  terrible  winter  of 
1829-30,  these  rehearsals  did  not  proceed 
quite  so  smoothly  as  they  should.  The  sym- 
pathy of  the  actors  at  the  Thefitre  Fran£ais 
did  not  altogether  lie  with  the  romantics,  and 
Mile.  Mars  could  only  half  conceal  her  own 
dislike  of  the  new  school.  Fifty  years  of 
life,  moreover,  had  not  improved  her  tem- 
per, and  Dumas,  Victor's  faithful  admirer, 
has  recorded  several  instances  of  the  disagree- 
ments that  arose.  One  of  these  may  be  men- 
tioned. 

Pausing  in  the  middle  of  a  rehearsal,  Mile. 
Mars  suddenly  said  to  the  performer  who 
was  acting  with  her, 

"  Pardon  me,  I  have  a  word  to  say  to  the 
author." 

She  advanced  to  the  footlights,  and,  shad- 
ing her  eyes,  looked  round  about  in  every 
direction,  as  if  trying  to  discover  him,  al- 
though she  was  perfectly  aware  that  he  was 
sitting  in  the  orchestra  close  to  her. 

"  Is  M.  Hugo  here?"  she  inquired. 

"  Here,  mademoiselle,  at  your  service,"  re- 
plied Hugo. 

"Ah,  yes;  thank  you;  I  want  to  speak  to 
you  about  this  line — 


94 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


" '  And  thon,  my  lion,  how  proud  and  generous  thon 
art!' 

that  I  am  made  to  say." 

"Quite  right,"  rejoined  Hugo;  "Hernani 
addresses  you,  and  says, 

" '  Alas !  I  love  thee  with  a  love  for  tears  too  deep ; 
Together  let  us  die.    E'en  thongh  the  world  were 

mine, 

Its  choicest.richest  store  of  blessing  should  be  thine. 
Unhappy  I !' 

And  you  say  to  him, 

"•And  thou,  my  lion,  how  proud  and  generous  thou 
art  1' " 

"And  you  really  like  that?"  inquired  the 
actress. 

"Like  what?"  demanded  the  author. 

"  The  term  '  my  lion.'  " 

"  Yes,  I  wrote  it  because  I  liked  it  best." 

"  And  you  wish  me  to  retain  it?" 

"Certainly;  unless  you  can  suggest  some- 
thing better. " 

"I  am  not  the  author;  it  is  not  my  place, 
but  yours,  to  find  something  better,"  insisted 
Mile.  Mars. 

"  Well,  then,  we  will,  if  you  please,  leave 
the  words  as  they  stand,"  retorted  Hugo. 

"But  I  feel  it  so  odd  to  have  to  call  M.Fir- 
min  my  lion." 

"  That  is  only  because  you  want  to  remain 
Mile.  Mars  instead  of  becoming  Dona  Sol. 
Once  get  yourself  absorbed  so  as  to  feel  your- 
self the  Castilian  lady,  the  noble  daughter  of 


the  sixteenth  century.and  the  pupil  of  Gomez 
de  Sylva,  and  you  will  have  no  thought  of 
M.  Finnin ;  you  will  see  before  you  none 
other  than  Hernani,  the  robber  chief,  making 
the  monarch  tremble  in  his  capital.  Be  such 
a  woman,  and  to  such  a  man  you  will  open 
your  soul,  and  say  my  lion." 

"  Well,  then,"  assented  the  actress,  in  her 
harsh,  dry  voice, "  if  you  decide  so,  I  will  say 
no  more.  My  business  is  to  deliver  what  the 
manuscript  directs;  it  makes  no  difference  to 
me.  Come,  Firmin,  we  will  proceed: 

"  '  And  thou,  my  lion,  how  proud  and  generous  thou 
art  1' " 

The  rehearsal  was  then  resumed;  but  the 
very  next  day  the  same  contention  arose 
again,  and  Mile.  Mars  insisted  upon  substi- 
tuting "  mon  seigneur  "  for  "  mon  lion."  An- 
noyed at  the  interruption,  Victor  Hugo  deter- 
mined at  once  both  to  put  an  end  to  the 
grumbling,  and  to  be  himself  treated  with 
proper  respect ;  accordingly,  he  requested 
Mile.  Mars  to  throw  up  her  part.  Accustomed 
though  she  had  been  to  have  all  the  writers 
of  the  world  bowing  down  to  her  talent,  Mile. 
Mars  soon  discovered  that  she  had  now  t6 
deal  with  a  character  of  another  kind.  She 
forthwith  became  polite,  and  promised  the 
author  that  she  would  perform  her  role  as  no 
one  else  could. 

When  the  hour  of  trial  came,  she  amply 
vindicated  her  word. 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIMM. 


Q5- 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

First  Performance  of  "  Hernani." — A  Petition  from  the  Classics. — Intrigues  of  the  Philistines. — Appearance 
of  "  Young  France." — Thcophile  Gautier's  Red  Waistcoat — A  Queue  at  the  Theatre  Door. — Seven  Hoars' 
Wait. — Scene  in  the  House. — Homage  to  Beauty. — The  Battle. — A  Blunder. — Down  with  Sycophants. — 
Mile.  Mars's  Costume. — A  Child's  Question. — The  Triumph  of  Romanticism. — Parodies  of  "Hernani." — 
The  Press  in  1830.— After  the  Victory. 


THE  first  performance  of  "Hernani"  was 
fixed  for  February  25,  1830,  a  day  that  will 
ever  be  memorable  in  theatrical  annals  as 
being  the  occasion  of  a  battle  that,  in  its  own 
field,  may  be  compared  in  importance  with 
Marengo  or  Austerlitz,  although  many  of  the 
details  are  not  generally  known. 

After  the  prohibition  of ' '  Marion  Delorme, " 
and  the  commotion  that  had  been  made  dur- 
ing the  rehearsals  of  "Hernani,"  public  curi- 
osity was  excited  to  the  highest  pitch.  The 
classics  did  their  utmost  to  prevent  the  per- 
formance of  the  piece.  Their  animosity  is 
not  hard  to  understand,  as  the  innovators  were 
set  upon  displacing  them  from  a  stage  which 
they  had  hitherto  regarded  as  their  own  pe- 
culiar property.  Accordingly  seven  Acade- 
micians, a  worn-out  remnant  of  the  imperial 
literati  who  had  been  long  accustomed  to 
supply  dramas  for  the  Theatre  Frangais,  ad- 
dressed a  petition  to  the  king  requiring  that 
the  house  should  be  closed  against  all  pro- 
ductions of  the  new  school,  and  be  reserved 
exclusively  for  writers  who  really  appre- 
hended the  true  and  the  beautiful.  The  pe- 
tition specially  demanded  that  the  rehearsals 
of  "Hernani "  should  be  stopped. 

Charles  X.  gave  these  benighted  individuals 
an  appropriate  answer. 

"  In  literary  matters,"  he  said,  "  my  place, 
gentlemen,  is  only,  like  yours,  among  the  au- 
dience." 

The  complainants,  however,  were  not  in- 
clined to  allow  that  they  were  beaten:  they 
brought  every  kind  of  official  influence  to 
bear  so  effectually  that,  during  the  early  part 
of  Louis  Philippe's  reign,  they  contrived  to 
keep  an  interdict  upon  all  Victor  Hugo's  dra- 
matic works;  but  now,  meanwhile,  in  1830, 
"Hernani"  was  about  to  be  performed,  and 
they  had  to  insure  its  being  received  with 
hoots  and  hisses. 

A  watch,  as  strict  as  possible,  was  always 
kept  during  the  rehearsals  at  the  door  of  the 
theatre;  but,  in  spite  of  this,  one  of  the  clas- 


sic confraternity  had  succeeded  in  concealing 
himself  somewhere  within  the  house.  In  this 
way  a  certain  knowledge  of  the  piece  was  ob- 
tained beforehand,  and  a  number  of  ridicu- 
lous verses  were  hawked  about  to  bring  the 
play  into  contempt  and  make  it  fall  flat.  In 
addition  to  this,  a  parody  on  the  forthcoming 
drama  was  performed  at  the  Vaudeville  sev- 
eral days  before  the  piece  was  brought  out 
at  the  Theatre  FranQais. 

Joining  with  the  cabal,  the  censorship,  in 
the  strangest  fashion,  published  an  abusive 
notice  of  the  manuscript,  which  had  been 
submitted  to  them  by  order. 

These  various  manoeuvres  are  described  in 
a  curious  article  in  the  Journal  des  Debats  of 
February  24, 1830,  from  which  it  is  evident  to 
how  limited  an  extent  the  word  of  some  of 
the  censors  was  to  be  trusted. 

One  of  them,  who  had  studied  "Marion 
Delorme  "  from  his  own  point  of  view,  said  to 
the  poet  shortly  afterwards,  "For  my  part,  I 
consider  that  a  censor  who  should  knowingly 
divulge  the  contents  of  a  work  that  it  had 
been  his  duty  to  inspect  would  be  acting  in  a 
way  as  odious  and  unworthy  as  a  priest  who 
should  reveal  the  secrets  of  the  confessional." 

But,  notwithstanding  this  vehement  decla- 
ration, there  was  a  breach  of  confidence  some- 
where: some  verses  of  the  play  were  pub- 
lished, many  of  them  so  altered  that  they 
were  quite  grotesque.  The  poet  knew  pretty 
well  that  the  treachery  had  not  come  from 
the  theatre,  and,  suspecting  the  real  source 
of  the  attack,  made  his  complaint  to  the  afore- 
said incorruptible  censor,  receiving  in  reply 
a  letter  which,  with  his  usual  magnanimity, 
he  abstained  from  publishing,  but  which  con- 
tained the  following  passage: 

' '  What,  sir,  is  your  grievance  ?  Have  your 
spies  informed  you  that  I  have  revealed  the 
secret  of  your  drama?  Have  you  been  told 
that  I  have  been  repeating  your  verses  and 
turning  them  into  ridicule?  And  suppose  it 
is  so,  what  harm  have  I  done?  Are  your 


96 


VICTOR  UUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


works  sacred?  And  as  to  the  lines  that  have 
been  quoted,  there  can  hardly  be  more  than 
three  at  the  utmost." 

The  excuse  that  is  thus  pleaded  reminds 
us  very  much  of  the  thief  in  "  Jodelle,"  who, 
when  he  was  caught  in  the  act  of  stealing, 
gave  himself  credit  for  only  taking  three 
louis-d'or  when  he  had  the  whole  pile  before 
him  from  which  he  could  help  himself.  The 
scrupulous  censor  had  evidently  lost  all  sense 
of  shame. 

All  Paris,  as  might  be  expected,  was  intent 
upon  witnessing  the  first  performance,  and 
the  competition  for  the  smallest  boxes  was 
very  keen.  M.  Thiers,  Benjamin  Constant, 
and  many  more  who  were  interested  in  liter- 
ature, applied  to  the  author  to  secure  them 
places. 

Just  on  the  eve  of  the  important  day  .Vic- 
tor Hugo,  to  the  consternation  of  the  actors 
and  actresses,  came  to  the  resolution  that  he 
should  refuse  admission  to  all  claqueurs. 
Besides  that  his  pride  made  him  entertain  a 
dislike  to  paid  applause,  there  was  another 
reason  that  weighed  with  him — he  felt  that 
he  could  have  no  confidence  in  men  who  had 
always  been  in  the  service  of  the  classics;  and 
it  was  one  of  not  the  least  curious  signs  of 
those  heroic  times  that  the  "knights  of  the 
chandelier,"  in  their  passionate  attachment 
to  tragedy  of  the  old  school,  might  begin  to 
hiss  instead  of  to  applaud. 

Fired  with  an  unprecedented  zeal,  a  bevy 
of  the  literary  scions  of  the  day  came  forward 
and  offered  themselves  as  a  substitute  for  the 
professional  claqueurs,  who  were  evidently 
unreliable.  Gerard  de  Nerval  \mdertook  to 
recruit  and  organize  the  voluntary  troop 
ready  for  the  evening  that  threatened  to  be 
so  stormy.  This  refined  and  elegant  writer 
had  a  brave  and  generous  nature,  and  well 
deserved  the  confidential  friendship  to  which 
Victor  Hugo  admitted  him.  His  first  step 
was  to  select  a  certain  number  of  ' '  captains  " 
on  whom  he  knew  he  might  rely,  and  com- 
mission them  to  enlist  a  company  of  recruits. 
To  the  summons  thus  issued  Petrus  Borel, 
Balzac,  Berlioz,  Auguste  Maquet,  Preault, 
Jehaii  du  Seigneur,  Joseph  Bouchardy,  and  a 
number  of  others  quickly  responded,  all  of 
them  ready  to  rally  to  the  trumpet-call  of 
"Hernani,"  and,  as  they  said,  "resolved  to 
take  their  stand  upon  the  rugged  mount  of  Ro- 
manticism, and  valiantly  to  defend  its  passes 
against  the  assaults  of  the  classics."  De  Ner- 
val distributed  to  them  their  tickets,  which 
consisted  of  squares  of  red  paper  signed  at 


the  corner  with  the  word  hierro,  the  Spanish 
for  "iron." 

Among  those  on  whom  the  lot  of  captain 
fell  none  was  prouder  than  Theophile  Gau- 
tier,  who  had  long  been  burning  with  a  zeal- 
ous eagerness  to  fight  against  the  hydra  of 
"perruquinism."  Wild  and  boundless  was 
the  enthusiasm  with  which  the  light-hearted 
young  poet  demanded  of  his  followers,  on 
then-  honor,  that  they  would  give  no  quarter 
to  the  Philistines!  Unparalleled  was  the  de- 
votion with  which  he  regarded  the  author,  to 
whom  he  was  ready  to  say,  as  Dante  of  old 
said  to  Virgil, "  Thou  art  the  guide  and  mas- 
ter of  my  thought  I"  And  touching  are  the 
pages,  exuberant  in  their  passion  and  rich  in 
their  flow,  which  he  has  dedicated  to  the  im- 
mortal day  of  "  Hernani!"  And  fervent  was 
the  frenzy  with  which  he  pressed  to  his  bos- 
om the  crimson  ticket  with  its  motto,  bidding 
him  to  be  strong  and  trusty  as  Castilian  steel! 
He  was  but  nineteen  years  of  age;  but  having 
made  up  his  mind  to  be  a  champion  and  a 
warrior  in  the  cause,  he  concluded  that  it 
would  be  out  of  character  for  him  to  appear 
in  the  ordinary  costume  of  a  citizen,  and  felt 
that  it  behooved  him  to  adopt  some  special 
uniform.  For  some  time  he  had  visions  of 
fanciful  doublets  and  feudal  armor,  but  at 
last  decided  upon  wearing  a  red  waistcoat. 
He  declared  that  he  had  a  special  predilection 
for  red,  not  only  as  a  noble  color  that  had 
been  dishonored  by  political  strife,  but  as  the 
type  of  blood  and  life  and  heat;  a  hue  that 
blends  with  equal  perfectness  with  marble  or 
with  gold,  and  which  he  deplored  as  having 
vanished  so  entirely  from  modern  life  and 
modern  art.  He  discerned,  as  he  thought,  a 
fitting  occasion  whereon  red  might  be  brought 
I  from  oblivion,  and  reinstated  in  an  honor  that 
I  it  should  henceforth  never  lose.  He  would 
constitute  himself  "  the  lion  of  the  red,"  and 
would  flash  its  brilliancy  upon  "the  grays," 
as  he  designated  the  classics,  who  had  no 
sympathy  with  the  light  of  poetry.  The  bul- 
locks, though  terrified  at  the  color,  should 
have  to  face  the  red  of  Hugo's  verse! 

Having  thus  made  up  his  mind  about  the 
dress  he  would  wear,  he  sent  for  Gaulois,  his 
tailor.  Gaulois  made  a  good  many  objec- 
tions; it  seemed  to  him  a  proceeding  out  of 
all  reason  for  a  waistcoat  not  only  to  be  red, 
but  that  it  should  be  made  to  button  behind. 
One  by  one  the  tailor's  objections  were  over- 
ruled :  Gautier  first  gave  him  a  pattern  which 
he  had  himself  cut  out  of  a  piece  of  gray 
cloth,  and  although  he  was  looked  upon  as 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


97 


little  short  of  raving  mad  when  he  selected 
some  scarlet  satin  for  the  material,  he  held  to 
his  order  so  firmly  that  resistance  was  useless, 
and  the  waistcoat  was  made. 

The  rest  of  Theophile  Gautier's  costume, 
as   described  in    "L'Histoire  de   Romanti- 


tered  ribbon  did  duty  both  for  collar  and 
cravat.  It  is  the  red  waistcoat,  however,  that 
will  be  remembered  for  ages  yet  to  come! 

In  his  "  Legende  du  Gilet  Rouge  "  Gautier 
himself  writes: 

"Any  one  who  has  the  least  acquaintance 


THEOPHILE   GAUTIER   Uf    I860. 


cisme,"  consisted  of  a  pair  of  pale -green 
trousers  with  a  stripe  of  black  velvet  down 
the  seams,  a  black  coat  with  broad  velvet 
facings,  and  a  voluminous  gray  overcoat 
turned  up  with  green  satin.  A  piece  of  wa- 
7 


with  French  character  will  own  that  to  pre- 
sent one's  self  with  hair  as  long  as  Albert 
Diirer's,  and  a  waistcoat  as  red  as  an  Anda- 
lusian  bull-fighter's,  in  a  place  of  amusement 
where  all  Paris  is  assembled,  requires  a  sort 


08 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  1IIS   TIME. 


of  courage  very  different  from  that  which  in- 1 
spires  a  man  to  storm  a  redoubt  that  is  bris- ! 
tling  with  cannon.     Never  has  there  been  a 
war  but  there  has  always  been  the  heroic 
band,  the  forlorn  -  hope,  volunteering  to  ac- 
complish the  daring  deed ;  but  hitherto  there 
has  been  found  only  a  solitary  Frenchman 
venturing  to  flaunt  upon  his  breast  a  piece  of 
stuff  of  so  rare,  so  dazzling,  so  aggressive  a 
hue! 

"And  now  we  must  wear  it  bravely:  no 
good  for  us  to  try  to  tear  it  off;  it  must  cling 
to  us  like  the  coat  of  Nessus.  It  is  the  hallu- 
cination of  the  bourgeoisie  that  they  never  can 
see  us  without  it;  we  may  put  on  garments 
of  olive,  of  chestnut,  of  ochre,  of  London  soot, 
of  pickle  color,  or  any  other  of  the  neutral 
tints  that  a  sober  civilization  may  approve, 
but  nevertheless  we  shall  never  be  recognized 
as  otherwise  than  wearing  the  red  waistcoat. 

"Precisely  so  also  with  the  hair.  Cut  it 
as  short  as  we  will,  we  shall  always  be  pre- 
sumed to  be  wearing  it  long;  so  that  even 
were  we  to  present  ourselves  to  the  orchestra 
with  our  polls  as  polished  as  ivory  or  as 
smooth  and  shiny  as  ostrich-eggs,  the  whole 
artillery  of  opera-glasses  would  assuredly  re- 
veal that  a  perfect  cascade  of  Merovingian 
locks  was  falling  around  our  shoulders." 

Many  other  of  the  "Hernani"  partisans 
appeared  in  costume  scarcely  less  eccentric. 
The  young  men  had  asked  to  be  allowed  ad- 
mission into  the  theatre  before  the  general 
public,  so  that  they  might  preoccupy  the  ob- 
scure places  or  any  corners  in  which  some 
"hissers"  might  be  likely  to  make  an  am- 
bush. This  request  was  conceded  on  condi- 
tion that  they  should  all  be  at  the  door  by 
three  o'clock,  but  so  anxious  were  they  not 
to  be  thwarted  in  their  plan  that  they  actually 
assembled  at  noon. 

The  passengers  along  the  street  stopped 
and  stared  at  them  with  amazement;  such  a 
fantastic  assemblage  baffled  their  comprehen- 
sion. Some  of  them  wore  soft  felt  hats; 
some  appeared  in  coats  of  velvet  or  satin, 
frogged,  braided,  or  trimmed  with  fur ;  others, 
enveloped  in  Spanish  cloaks,  stood  with  their 
arms  akimbo;  and  many  more  wore  velvet 
caps  of  the  most  extraordinary  shapes.  It 
looked  as  though  a  costumier's  store  had  been 
ransacked,  and  "young  France "  had  run  off 
with  the  spoil  to  deck  themselves  out  as  Ru- 
bens, Velasquez,  or  some  of  the  old  heroes  of 
the  Revolution. 

It  was  not,  howeve;  the  motley  costumes 
that  so  much  offended  "the  good  taste"  of 


the  bourgeoisie,  as  the  way  in  which  the  hair 
was  allowed  to  fall  round  the  neck  aud  the 
prodigious  growth  of  beards.  At  that  date 
beards  were  considered  so  improper  that  in 
no  station  of  life  would  a  young  man  have 
ventured  to  be  married  wearing  either  beard 
or  whiskers  or  mustache.  The  two  Deverias, 
in  1825,  were  the  first  to  raise  the  standard  of 
revolt  in  this  respect,  and  they  were  only  al- 
lowed the  privilege  because  their  friend  Vic- 
tor Hugo  had  encouraged  it.  Their  example 
was  ultimately  followed  by  a  host  of  others. 

Altogether  the  long  hair  was  decidedly  the 
feature  that  most  of  all  provoked  the  wrath 
of  the  citizens.  The  flowing  locks  might  be 
carefully  trimmed,  and  the  mustaches  might 
be  elegantly  curled,  but  nevertheless  they  cre- 
ated a  great  deal  of  scandal.  The  classic 
journals,  great  and  small,  announced  that  the 
corps  of  the  romanticists  was  made  up  of 
rough,  fierce,  and  dirty  vagabonds;  "brigands 
of  thought,"  as  Philothee  O'Neddy  designat- 
ed them— such  alone  were  capable  of  espous- 
ing the  cause  of  "  Hernani." 

But,  "brigands"  though  they  were  called, 
they  were  nevertheless  poets,  reviewers,  jour- 
nalists, architects,  painters,  and  sculptors; 
for  the  most  part,  they  belonged  to  good 
families,  and  were  well  educated,  and  sincere 
in  their  love  of  art  and  liberty.  At  the  same 
time,  it  must  be  allowed  that  it  was  a  mis- 
fortune that  they  should  elect  to  manifest 
their  craving  for  reform  and  their  detestation 
of  the  prevailing  flatness  of  style  by  adopting 
such  an  eccentricity  of  dress  and  personal 
appearance. 

It  was  a  whim  which  involved  them  in 
considerable  discomfort,  at  times  exposing 
them  to  violent  assaults ;  and  as  they  now 
stood  in  their  places  in  the  queue  in  the  Rue 
de  Valois,  they  were  pelted  with  cabbage- 
stalks  and  every  variety  of  filth.  Balzac 
himself  was  struck  on  the  face. 

They  knew  well  enough  that  any  retalia- 
tion on  their  part  would  only  provoke  a  row, 
bringing  about  the  interference  of  the  police; 
accordingly,  they  only  smiled  and  allowed 
the  mob  to  bespatter  them  at  will. 

At  two  o'clock  the  doors  of  the  theatre 
were  opened,  and  the  troop  rushed  in,  mak- 
ing it  their  first  business  to  explore  the  most 
obscure  places  in  the  house,  in  case  any  of 
their  adversaries  should  be  in  hiding.  Some 
chose  the  pit,  some  the  upper  gallery,  those 
most  devoted  to  the  cause  always  selecting 
the  most  inferior  positions. 

There  were  more  than  six  hours  to  wait 


"YOUNG  FRANCE"  OUTSIDE  THE  THEATRE  FRANC,  AIS, 


100 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  UIS   TIME. 


before  the  curtain  would  rise.  They  had, 
at  any  rate,  got  the  start  of  the  classics,  but 
the  next  question  was  how  they  should  con- 
duct themselves  during  the  long  interval. 

It  cannot  be  said  that  they  behaved  par- 
ticularly well.  The  far-seeing  ones,  the  no- 
taries of  the  future,  had  provided  themselves 
with  refreshments:  they  had  brought  in  their 
hard-boiled  eggs  and  their  sausages,  smelling 
sufficiently  strong  of  garlic,  and  they  had  not 
forgotten  their  bottles  of  wine.  According- 
ly, they  ate  and  drank  and  chattered,  and 
then  they  proceeded  to  sing  their  studio 
sengs ;  but  the  hours,  nevertheless,  passed 
somewhat  tediously  a\v;iy. 

Among  other  things  they  discussed  the 
various  titles  that  had  been  proposed  for  the 
forthcoming  piece.  Victor  Hugo  himself  had 
first  intended  calling  it  "Trois  pour  Une," 
truly  a  romantic  title,  and  one  which,  in  the 
opinion  of  some  of  them — although  the  mi- 
nority— was  a  fine  challenge  to  the  old  trag- 
ic party.  A  good  many,  however,  preferred 
calling  it  "L'Honneur  Castillan,"  as  in  a 
certain  degree  indicating  the  leading  idea  of 
the  play.  Still,  the  predominant  feeling  was 
in  favor  of  naming  it  simply  "Hernani," 
the  title  which  had  been  retained,  although 
Maine's  first  edition,  published  in  1830,  was 
entitled  "Hernani,  ou  1'Honneur  Castillan." 

Some  of  the  young  enthusiasts  related  how 
Victor  Hugo,  in  coming  from  Spain  to  France 
as  a  little  child,  had  passed  through  the  town 
of  Ernani,  and  maintained  that  its  sonorous 
name  had  fastened  itself  upon  the  poet's 
memory;  others  of  them  recited  some  of  the 
verses  of  the  drama  which  their  intimacy 
with  the  author  had  enabled  them  to  learn 
by  heart,  and  thus,  by  means  of  sandwiches, 
songs,  and  recitations,  the  time  waned  and 
the  momentous  hour  drew  nigh. 

The  chandelier  was  lighted,  and  the  busi- 
ness of  the  evening  commenced  long  before 
the  rising  of  the  curtain,  as  whenever  a  box- 
door  was  opened  the  eyes  of  "young France " 
were  turned  in  that  direction,  and  as  often 
as  any  graceful  girl  was  admitted  to  her  seat 
there  was  a  general  outburst  of  applause. 

The  young  connoisseurs  were  far  more  at- 
tracted by  personal  beauty  than  they  were 
captivated  either  by  sparkling  jewels  or  cost- 
ly toilets.  When  Mile.  Delphine  Gay,  who 
afterwards  became  Madame  de  Girardin, 
made  her  appearance,  her  chiselled  features, 
her  fair  hair,  and  the  finished  elegance  of  her 
attire  evoked  for  her  a  triple  round  of  cheers; 
and  yet  she  wore  nothing  but  the  plainest 


white  muslin  dress,  fastened  with  a  blue  sash, 
her  entire  costume,  as  she  told  the  Due  de 
Montmorency  the  next  day,  having  cost  only 
eight-and-twenty  francs.  But  the  color  of 
the  sash,  the  perfect  fit  of  the  robe,  and  her 
own  sweet  countenance  formed  a  tout-ensem- 
ble so  charming  that  it  could  not  fail  to  arouse 
enthusiasm. 

In  due  time  the  classics  also  began  to  ar- 
rive, and  the  heads  of  the  Academicians  be- 
gan to  "pave  the  orchestra."  Then  com- 
menced the  fray.  At  first,  low  murmurs  and 
angry  growls  were  heard  amid  the  throng. 
The  two  armies,  or,  as  they  have  been  signifi- 
cantly called,  "the  two  civilizations,"  found 
themselves  face  to  face;  with  war  in  their 
hearts  and  with  head  erect,  they  glared  upon 
each  other  ready  to  discharge  their  volleys  of 
vituperation.  Gautier's  red  waistcoat  was  of 
course  a  conspicuous  object,  and  became  the 
theme  of  perpetual  banter;  but  the  young 
romantic  only  smiled  contemptuously,  and, 
disdaining  all  ridicule,  stood  with  his  fists 
closed,  ready  to  resent  any  direct  provoca- 
tion that  should  be  given.  Endowed  with 
prodigious  strength,  he  seemed  only  waiting 
his  opportunity  to  show  himself  a  Samson 
among  the  Philistines. 

The  storm  still  gathered,  the  tumult  in- 
creased, and  the  cross-fire  of  invectives  be- 
came more  continuous,  until  there  is  little 
doubt  that  blows  would  ultimately  have  fol- 
lowed, had  not  the  three  sharp  raps,  the  well- 
known  signal  for  the  lifting  of  the  cur- 
tain, temporarily  at  least  calmed  the  excite- 
ment. 

But  the  play  did  not  proceed  far  without 
interruption.  The  scene  of  the  first  act  is  a 
bedchamber,  in  which  a  crimson  curtain 
covers  the  window  and  a  secret  door  is  seen, 
at  which  Hernani  is  accustomed  to  knock. 
The  old  duenna,  Josepha  Duarte,  having 
drawn  the  curtain  and  listened  at  the  door 
for  the  arrival  of  Hernani  to  visit  her  mis- 
tress, proceeds  to  say, 

"Serait-ce  deja  lui?  C'est  bien  a  1'escalier 
D6rob6.  .  .  ." 

Immediately  the  commotion  burst  out 
afresh,  and  loud  protestations  were  heard  on 
every  side. 

The  classics  had  never  known  such  wan- 
ton audacity;  to  put  "derobe"  in  such  a 
place,  at  the  beginning  of  another  line !  Pre- 
posterous! 

"But  that, "  exclaimed  a  red -haired  artist, 
"  is  just  the  beauty  of  it;  the  position  of  the 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS  TIME. 


101 


word  precisely  answers  to  the  mystery  of  the 
secret  staircase !" 

The  loud  cries  of  "Silence!"  "Hush!" 
"Turn  him  out!"  had  the  effect  of  making 
the  offender  hold  his  tongue ;  but  the  tumult 
could  not  be  long  suppressed. 

We  may  again  quote  Theophile  Gautier, 
who,  though  an  active  partisan,  may  yet  be 
accepted  as  a  competent  witness  of  what 
transpired  with  regard  to  this  struggle.  He 
subsequently  writes : 

"Now  that  men's  minds  have  become  ac- 
customed to  regard  as  classical  the  very  nov- 
elties that  at  first  were  treated  as  pure  bar- 
barisms, it  is  difficult  to  describe  the  effect 
produced  upon  an  audience  by  verses  so 
singular  and  strong,  and  yet  of  a  style  so 
strange,  containing  a  ring  of  both  Corneille 
and  Shakespeare.  Before  the  excitement 
can  be  comprehended,  it  is  necessary  to  real- 
ize the  extent  to  which  the  mere  honor  for 
words  was  carried  in  France,  alike  in  poetry 
and  in  prose ;  and,  after  all,  it  will  be  next  to 
impossible  to  conceive  the  horror  which  was 
originally  experienced,  though  now,  like  oth 
er  prejudices,  it  may  have  passed  away. 

"Let  any  one  nowadays  attend  a  per- 
formance of  '  Hernani,'  following  the  play 
with  an  old  copy  in  his  hand,  upon  the  mar- 
gin of  which  there  are  marks  indicating  the 
passages  which  at  first  were  the  signal  for 
uproar  and  contention,  and  he  will  find  that 
these  are  the  very  passages  at  which  the  ap- 
plause rises  like  the  flapping  of  the  wings  of 
gigantic  birds;  the  very  points  which  once 
were  the  occasion  of  battles  fought  and  re- 
fought,  of  ambuscades  of  reviling  epithets, 
of  bloodhounds  let  loose  to  fasten  on  the 
throats  of  the  foe,  are  now  hailed  with  univer- 
sal favor.  The  present  generation  can  never 
duly  comprehend  the  efforts  that  were  made 
to  liberate  them  from  the  long-established 
bonds  of  foolery. 

"How  could  any  one  imagine  that  such  a 
line  as 

"'Est-il  miuuit— minnit  bientfit,' 

aroused  a  storm  so  violent  that  it  raged  for 
days  together?" 

Throughout  the  performance,  everything 
that  night  served  as  a  pretext  for  an  iiproar; 
and  when,  at  the  end  of  the  first  act,  Herna- 
ni uttered  his  cry  of  anger : 

"De  ta  suite— j'en  snis." 

the  whole  tribe  of  baldheads  was  lashed  into 
incredible  fury. 
It  must  not  be  concealed,  however,  that 


the  defence  was  as  furious  and  occasionally 
quite  as  senseless  as  the  attack.  For  in- 
stance, when  Ruy  Gomez  is  about  to  marry 
his  kinswoman,  Dona  Sol,  he  confides  her 
to  the  care  of  King  Carlos,  whereupon  Her- 
nani exclaims  to  Gomez,  ' '  Vieillard  stupide 
[you  old  stupid],  he  is  in  love  with  her!" 
A  veritable  classic,  M.  Perseval  de  Grand- 
maison,  who  was  rather  deaf,  imagined  that 
the  words  were  "Vieil  as  de  piques"  (old 
ace  of  spades).  Full  of  indignation,  he  cried 
out, 

' '  This  is  too  much !     Shame !" 

"What  did  you  say?"  inquired  Lassailly, 
who  was  sitting  in  the  adjoining  stall  and 
had  not  observed  the  words  to  which  he  al- 
luded. 

"  I  say  it  is  a  great  shame  to  call  a  worthy 
character  like  Ruy  Gomez  an  old  ace  of 
spades." 

"  Shame,  sir?  not  at  all!"  retorted  Lassail- 
ly; "he  has  a  perfect  right  to  do  so  ;  cards 
were  invented  —  yes,  M.  1'Academicien,  I 
should  have  thought  you  would  have  known 
that  cards  were  invented  in  the  days  of 
Charles  VI.  Bravo,  Hugo!  Bravo,  old  ace 
of  spades!" 

This  anecdote  is  related  in  the  "Memoires 
de  Dumas." 

Whenever  the  groans  of  the  Philistines 
became  too  unbearable,  the  enthusiasts  of 
the  pit  would  drown  them  by  shouting,  "To 
the  guillotine  with  the  sycophants!" 

But,  however  fierce  was  the  outcry,  no 
doubt  could  remain  that  the  old  strongholds 
were  captured,  and  Romanticism  had  proved 
triumphant;  Romanticism,  which,  according 
to  Baudelaire,  is  but  the  modern  expression 
for  the  beautiful,  had  asserted  its  power, 
and  at  the  conclusion  of  the  performance 
the  name  of  the  author  was  proclaimed  as 
that  of  a  victorious  general,  and  the  shouts 
of  acclamation  overwhelmed  the  storm  of 
hisses. 

The  next  day  Chateaubriand  wrote  to  Vic- 
tor Hugo,  expressing  his  admiration  of  his 
genius,  and  hailed  him  as  one  rising  to  the 
world  just  at  the  time  that  his  own  star  was 
setting. 

Before  the  rising  of  the  drop  for  the  fifth 
act,  M.  Mame,  the  publisher,  had  asked  Vic- 
tor Hugo  to  give  him  an  interview  for  a  few 
minutes  in  the  street  outside,  and,  as  the  re- 
sult of  a  short  conversation,  he  offered  him 
six  thousand  francs  for  the  manuscript  of 
the  play.  The  bargain  was  forthwith  con- 
cluded, and  the  money  immediately  paid 


102 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  JUS  TIME. 


down  in  a  tobacconist's  shop  close  at  band. 
The  payment  came  very  opportunely.  Vic- 
tor Hugo,  who  has  himself  related  the  fact, 
had  not  at  the  time  more  than  fifty  francs 
in  the  world.  He  re-entered  the  theatre  in 
high  spirits. 

All  the  actors  and  actresses  had  gone 
through  their  parts  bravely,  and  the  poet 
made  due  acknowledgments  to  each  of 
them.  With  regard  to  Mile.  Mars,  he  own- 
ed that  none  but  those  who  saw  her  could 
have  any  idea  of  the  effect  that  she  had  pro- 
duced as  Dona  Sol,  so  skilfully  had  she  de- 
veloped the  part,  her  talent  carrying  her  from 
the  graceful  to  the  sublime,  and  back  from 
the  sublime  to  the  pathetic. 

Nevertheless,  the  popular  actress  had  had 
her  own  way;  she  had  never  been  able  to 
reconcile  herself  to  call  M.  Firmin  "mon 
lion,"  and  had  persisted  in  substituting  what 
appeared  to  her  the  more  appropriate  title 
of  "mon  seigneur;"  neither  would  she  al- 
low any  interference  with  her  toilette,  for,  al- 
though she  made  her  appearance  in  white, 
she  would  not  be  induced  to  wear  anything 
on  her  head  but  one  of  the  fanciful  little 
hats  that  were  all  the  rage  in  Paris  at  the 
time.  Nothing,  of  course,  could  be  more  in- 
congruous for  a  Spanish  girl  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  sixteenth  century,  but  her  reso- 
lution was  fixed.  The  costume,  which  is 
worthy  of  being  included  in  a  collection  of 
caricatures,  may  be  found  in  one  of  the  de- 
partments of  the  BibliothSque  Nationale. 

In  spite  of  all  minor  defects,  the  piece  re- 
tained its  place  in  the  play-bill  with  the  most 
brilliant  pecuniary  results,  standing  its  ground 
notwithstanding  the  ridicule  with  which  it 
continued  to  be  greeted. 

Listening  to  the  play  as  it  was  repeated 
night  after  night,  Victor  Hugo  found  by 
marking  h.3  manuscript  that  there  was  not  a 
line,  nor  a  half-line,  that  did  not  in  its  turn 
come  in  for  the  fate  of  being  hooted.  One 
evening  his  little  sister-in-law,  hardly  more 
than  a  child,  was  taken  to  the  theatre,  and, 
on  her  return,  asked  her  sister  whether  the 
hisses  that  went  on  all  through  the  intervals 
between  the  acts  were  of  the  same  account 
as  those  which  were  kept  up  during  the  per- 
formance. The  question  could  not  give  much 
consolation  to  Madame  Victor  Hugo,  who 
waited  anxiously  every  night  to  hear  how  the 
play  had  gone  off. 

The  wrath  of  the  public  was  fanned  by  the 
press,  which  had  never  been  more  unjust  in 
its  criticisms.  With  the  exception  of  the 


Journal  dea  Debate  and  one  or  two  reviews. 
1 1 n -iv  was  not  a  single  newspaper  found  to 
defend  the  work.  Unfortunately,  we  have 
not  the  means  of  reproducing  the  insults  that 
were  heaped  upon  the  poet  at  this  period, 
and  it  is  beyond  conception  with  what  dis- 
;:'ii-t  the  innovations  of  the  romantics  were 
received.  Women  were  up  in  arms  about 
the  immorality  of  the  piece,  considering  it 
horrible  and  monstrous  for  any  one  to  allow 
the  imagination  to  be  sullied  by  such  shame- 
ful scenes.  It  was  done  under  the  name  of 
the  national  dignity,  and  with  an  ostentation 
of  respect  for  the  purity  of  their  tongue  and 
admiration  of  the  beautiful ;  but  the  most  emi- 
nent critics  did  not  scruple  to  denounce  the 
romantics  as  slovens,  rascals,  drunkards,  and 
madmen,  and  to  declare  that  "  Hernani"  was 
utterly  foul  and  abominable. 

Foremost  among  the  assailants  was  Ar- 
mand  Carrel,  who,  in  his  earliest  contribu- 
tions to  the  National,  delivered  himself  of 
some  terrible  onslaughts. 

After  reading  his  first  article  on  ' '  Hernani, " 
Victor  Hugo  wrote  him  an  explanatory  let- 
ter, in  which  he  reminded  him  of  various 
peculiarities  characteristic  of  the  soi-disant 
classics  of  1830. 

Carrel  immediately  replied, 

"It  is  quite  true  that  I  take  my  stand  by 
the  classics,  but  the  classics  that  I  am  proud 
of  acknowledging  have  all  long  been  dead." 

And  having  said  this,  the  brilliant  polemist 
went  on  to  declare  his  conviction  that  no  op- 
position was  too  vehement  to  be  brought  to 
bear  on  a  production  that  was  calculated  to 
inspire  minds  naturally  refined  and  well-bal- 
anced with  a  deplorable  spirit  of  emulation. 
Blinded  with  rage,  he  had  not  the  penetra- 
tion to  foresee  that  the  author  of  "  Hernani " 
would  ultimately  come  to  rank  among  the 
greatest  of  "classics,"  who,  by  restoring  the 
lyric  to  the  drama, would  link  it  afresh  to  the 
ancients — to  ^schylus,  Sophocles,  and  Eurip- 
ides as  well  as  to  the  modern  Corneille  and 
Shakespeare. 

The  literary  war  rose  to  such  importance 
that  it  occupied  public  attention  almost  as 
much  as  the  appointment  of  Polignac  as 
minister.  It  created  a  vast  sensation  even  in 
the  provinces,  and  a  young  man  was  killed  in 
a  duel  of  which  a  quarrel  about  "Hernani " 
was  the  cause. 

Victor  Hugo  received  numberless  anony- 
mous letters,  not  only  full  of  insult,  but  some 
of  them  containing  threats  against  his  life; 
and  so  seriously  did  his  friends  regard  the  con- 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


103 


dition  of  things  that  they  never  failed  every 
night  when  he  left  the  theatre  to  accompany 
him  to  his  own  house. 

The  parodies  on  the  play  were  too  numer- 
ous to  be  recounted.  The  most  notorious 
were  those  entitled  "  Harnali,ou  la  Contrainte 
par  Cor,"  by  A.  de  Lauzanne;  "  N.  I.  Ni,  ou 
le  Danger  des  Castilles, "  a  wild  rigmarole  by 
Curmouche  and  Dupeuty ;  and  one  styled 
"  Fanfan  le  Troubadour  3.  la  Representation 
d'Hernani."  Countless  also  were  the  pam- 
phlets published  about  the  ' '  rococos  "  armed 
for  war  against  the  vandal  partisans  of  the 
Goth. 

These  feuds  have  long  since  passed  away. 
Time,  to  whom  ^Eschylus  dedicated  his  trage- 
dies, has  once  again  vindicated  the  assertion 
that  genius  will  always  in  the  long-run  at- 
tract men's  souls.  As  Paul  de  Saint- Victor 
has  remarked,  it  will  be  to  Victor  Hugo's 
honor  that  he  has  gained  in  grandeur  by  the 
storm ;  his  glory  has  been  reared  by  insult  as 
much  as  by  applause. 

"  The  flag  of  liberty  in  art  was  first  planted 
by  '  Hernani '  on  the  breach  of  an  assaulted 
citadel.  What  the  Cid  was  for  the  ancient 
stage,  such  was  '  Hernani '  to  the  new,  at  once 
a  revolution  and  a  renaissance.  The  mission 
of  '  Hernani,'  when  it  appeared  in  1830, was 
to  overturn  the  false  classic  tragedy  that  Cor- 


neille  had  reared  in  marble,  and  Campestron 
to  De  Jouy  had  imitated  in  plaster.  Hernani 
sounded  his  horn  as  Joshua  blew  his  trump- 
et, and  the  three  unities  tottered  to  their  fall. 
A  long  array  of  living  personages,  genuine 
flesh  and  blood,  natural,  with  human  passions, 
fanciful  and  lyrical,  strange  it  might  be,  and 
picturesque  in  their  attire,  came  trooping  in 
from  every  epoch  of  history,  to  take  the  places 
where  hitherto  abstract  kings  had  been  accus- 
tomed to  recount  their  abstract  dreams.  .  .  . 
The  main  design  of  this  literary  revolution 
was  to  annihilate  the  trashy  repetitions  of 
the  old  drama,  and  to  stamp  out  the  common- 
place conventionalities  of  comedy  where  true 
eloquence  was  only  aped  by  a  laborious  rhet- 
oric. The  romantics  have  been  likened  tc 
barbarians,  and  they  may  do  worse  than  ac- 
cept the  comparison.  Wherever  the  horse  of 
Attila  set  his  hoof,  the  grass  would  grow  no 
more ;  so  where  Victor  Hugo's  drama  has 
made  good  its  footing,  the  miserable  thistles 
and  the  artificial  flowers  of  the  false  classic 
style  have  never  again  been  seen.  The  renais- 
sance was  magnificent,  and  requickened 
every  form  of  language  and  of  thought." 

In  consequence  of  Mile.  Mars  having  tc 
leave,  the  performance  of  "Hernani"  was 
discontinued,  and  the  play  was  not  agam 
acted  until  eight  years  afterwards. 


104 


VIC TOli  HUGO  AND  1118   TIME. 


CHAPTER   XIV. 

The  Revolution  of  July,  1830.— Performance  of  "Marion  Delorme."— Reasons  for  Delay.— Reception  by  the 
Public.— Parodies.— Jules  Janln's  Indignation.  —  "Le  Roi  s'Amnse."— First  Performance. —A  Severe 
Critic.— Immediate  Prohibition.— Causes  of  Prohibition.— Lonis  Philippe's  Ministry.— Trial  before  the 

Board  of  Trade.— Disgraceful  Hostility  of  the  Newspapers.— The  Poet's  Reply "  Lucrece  Borgia."— Its 

Actors.— Immense  Success.— A  Duel  Avoided. 


"To  fight  for  liberty"  was  the  romantic 
motto  that  had  now  become  the  watchword 
of  the  people.  Roused  to  indignation  by  the 
edicts  promulgated  by  Charles  X.,  and  by  the 
policy  of  his  minister,  Polignac,  Paris  at  last 
revolted,  and  at  the  end  of  July,  1830,  re- 
quested the  king  to  retire  into  exile,  and  there 
to  meditate  upon  the  mischief  of  despotism. 

The  political  revolution  was  effected  simul- 
taneously with  the  literary,but  unfortunately 
the  Republican  party  was  not  strong  enough 
to  establish  itself,  and  the  crown  merely 
changed  hands  by  passing  from  the  elder  to 
the  younger  branch  of  the  Bourbons.  After 
lurking  behind  the  throne,  Louis  Philippe 
now  succeeded  in  mounting  the  steps,  and 
made  an  attempt  to  naturalize  that  bastard 
form  of  government  which  in  France  will 
ever  be  an  impossibility — a  constitutional 
monarchy. 

Victor  Hugo's  relations  with  Louis  Philippe 
will  be  introduced  hereafter,  but,  adhering  to 
our  programme,  we  will  continue  to  recount 
the  incidents  connected  with  his  dramatic 
labors. 

The  expulsion  of  Charles  X.  removed  the 
impediment  to  the  production  of  "Marion 
Delorme,"  which,  it  will  be  remembered,  was 
prohibited  by  the  censorship  and  by  the  royal 
veto  in  1829.  But,  now  that  liberty  was  re- 
stored to  the  stage,  the  Comedie  Francaise 
bethought  themselves  of  the  piece,  and  the 
poet  received  a  number  of  applications  urg- 
ing him  to  allow  it  to  be  produced.  It  was 
conjectured,  not  without  some  show  of  reason, 
that  during  this  time  of  political  reaction  the 
fourth  act,  which  had  been  such  a  bugbear 
to  Charles  X.,  would  prove  a  brilliant  suc- 
cess. 

But,  as  the  author  has  explained  in  one  of 
his  prefaces  to  the  printed  editions  of  the 
play,  it  was  just  this  likelihood  of  reactionary 
success  that  induced  him  to  detain  the  work 
a  little  longer  in  his  portfolio.  He  felt  that 
he  was  in  a  somewhat  peculiar  position.  He 


had  indeed  for  some  years  been  in  the  fore- 
most ranks  of  the  opposition,  and  since  reach- 
ing man's  estate  he  had  been  on  the  side  of 
all  that  encouraged  liberty  and  improvement; 
moreover,  he  had  entered  into  certain  con- 
tracts about  this  "Marion  Delorme;"  but  at 
the  same  time  he  could  not  forget  how,  when 
he  had  first  been  launched  into  the  literary 
world  at  the  age  of  sixteen,  all  his  sympathies 
and  opinions  had  been  royalist  and  Vendean. 
He  might  be  convinced  now  that  his  senti- 
ments then  had  been  mere  delusions,  but  he 
could  not  fail  to  remember  that  he  had  once 
written  "a  poronation  ode,"  though  he  could 
plead  that  it  was  composed  when  the  peo- 
ple's king  had  announced  amid  universal 
acclamations  that  there  should  be  "no  more 
censorship!  no  more  halberds!"  And  now 
he  did  not  want  to  have  the  past  thrown  up 
against  him.  He  felt  in  his  heart  that  he  had 
acted  conscientiously  and  disinterestedly ;  he 
had  only  done  his  duty,  acting  according  to 
his  lights;  but  he  was  satisfied  that  now  his 
voice  ought  to  be  uplifted  rather  on  the  part 
of  those  who  applauded  the  people  than  of 
those  who  cursed  the  king,  and  accordingly 
he  refused  to  sanction  the  performance,  not 
caring  for  a  success  that  was  the  result  either 
of  political  allusions  or  of  scandal. 

When,  however,  another  year  had  elapsed, 
and  Charles  X.  and  his  censorship  had  fallen 
into  oblivion,  there  could  be  no  further  rea- 
son for  postponing  the  representation  of  an 
historical  drama  simply  because  Louis  XIII. 
was  one  of  the  characters. 

Certain,  therefore,  that  his  work  would  no 
longer  be  supposed  to  convey  any  insinuation 
against  the  Bourbons,  Victor  Hugo  allowed 
the  rehearsals  to  commence;  but,  in  spite  of 
the  solicitations  of  Mile.  Mars,  and  of  the 
manager  of  the  Thefitre  Frangais,  he  selected 
the  theatre  of  the  Porte-Saint-Martin,  thus  ful- 
filling the  prediction  of  M.  Crosnier.who  had 
now  become  the  proprietor  of  the  house. 

The  unavowed  hostility  that  still  lurked  in 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


105 


the  Rue  Richelieu  against  all  works  of  the 
romantic  school  decided  Victor  Hugo  upon 
making  this  change.  He  considered  it  ad- 
visable to  have  a  manager  who  would  take 
all  responsibility,  and  he  promised  M.  Cros- 
nier  to  provide  him  with  two  pieces  a  year, 
upon  the  condition  that  he  would  have  it 
announced  in  the  play -bills  that  M.  Hugo's 
works  would  not  be  submitted  to  the  censor- 
ship. 

The  first  performance  of  "  Marion  De- 
lorme"  took  place  on  August  11, 1831,  suc- 
ceeding upon  a  run  of  Alexandre  Dumas' 
"Antony."  Madame  Dorval  took  the  part 
of  Marion,  and  M.  Bocage  that  of  Didier. 
The  excitement  of  the  audience  was  quite  as 
great  as  it  had  been  at  the  first  performance 
of  "  Hernani;"  but,  in  spite  of  all  the  tumult, 
the  piece  was  obviously  a  success. 

From  the  production  of ' '  Marion  Delorme, " 
however,  the  receipts  were  less  than  they  had 
been  in  the  case  of  the  previous  play,  but  the 
enemies  of  the  poet  were  not  yet  completely 
disarmed,  although  perhaps  it  is  not  entirely 
to  be  attributed  to  their  spleen  that  there  was 
at  the  time  a  pecuniary  failure  of  a  piece 
which  is  now  always  received  with  unbound- 
ed applause,  and  which  throughout  its  five 
acts  never  fails  to  arouse  the  spectator  alter- 
nately to  laughter  and  terror,  and  to  charm 
him  by  the  flow  of  its  magnificent  verse. 

With  the  exception  of  the  principal  roles, 
all  the  parts,  although,  they  really  require 
thoroughly  good  acting,  were  taken  by  play- 
ers of  no  note  and  devoid  of  talent.  The 
public  taste,  too,  was  not  yet  educated  to  the 
new  style,  and  Victor  Hugo  had  still  many 
struggles  to  make  before  he  could  attain  his 
object  of  reforming  the  stage.  Moreover,  po- 
litical affairs  were  particularly  grave,  and  all 
men's  more  serious  interests  were  absorbed 
in  matters  that  seemed  of  larger  importance 
than  poetry  and  the  drama.  The  Journal 
Officiel  of  the  12th  of  August  does  not  even 
mention  the  performance  of  the  "Marion," 
while  all  the  other  journals  mention  the  piece 
only  to  condemn  it,  with  the  exception  of  the 
Journal  des  Debate,  and  even  that  is  some- 
what severe. 

It  was  in  a  Normandy  diligence  that  Alex- 
andre Dumas,  who  was  coming  from  Trou- 
ville,  expecting  to  be  in  time  to  witness  the 
production  of  the  play,  was  informed  by  a 
writer  on  the  staff  of  the  Debats  that  he  had 
come  too  late.  But,  in  order  to  console  him, 
the  contributor  to  a  paper  that  was  always  a 
supporter  of  Victor  Hugo's  interests  added, 


' '  However,  you  have  not  lost  much.  The 
audience  received  it  coldly,  very  coldly.  As 
poetry  it  is  weaker  than  'Hernani;'  and  as 
for  the  plot,  why,  that  is  prigged  from  De 
Vigny's  romance!" 

And  the  critic  rubbed  his  hands  with  a 
self-satisfied  air,  and  doubtless,  had  the  con- 
versation been  continued,  was  quite  ready  to 
go  on  to  avow  that  Victor  Hugo  had  really 
no  talent  whatever. 

The  Moniteur,  in  criticising  the  piece  on 
the  15th,  after  observing  that  talent  should 
never  overstep  the  rules  of  good  taste,  goes 
on  to  say  that  "this  maxim  could  not  be  too 
often  inculcated  upon  M.  Victor  Hugo,  who 
seems  no  more  inclined  to  recognize  it  now 
than  he  did  in  the  merry  days  of  '  Hernani. ' 
A  few  beardless  novices,  eager  perhaps  to 
keep  him  down  to  their  own  level,  may  flat- 
ter him  into  the  belief  that  his  productions 
are  all  c/iefs-d'ceuvre,  but  never  yet  has  he 
conceived  anything  more  meagre  and  com- 
monplace, and  at  the  same  time  more  full 
of  eccentricities,  than  '  Marion  Delorme. ' " 
In  reply  to  this,  the  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes 
insisted  that  M.  Hugo  had  never  so  truly 
shown  himself  a  poet,  nor  attained  to  so 
high  a  range  of  vision  nor  so  wide  a  field  of 
judgment  as  now. 

As  well  as  being  attacked  by  the  press,  the 
play  was  travestied  by  parodies  at  the  minor 
theatres.  At  the  Varietes  there  was  "Une 
Nuit  de  Marion  Delorme,"  by  Theric  and 
Girau ;  and  at  the  Vaudeville,  the  '  Gothon 
du  Passage  Delorme,"  by  Dupeuty  and  Du- 
vert.  Nor  can  it  be  imagined,  what  coarse, 
stupid  jokes  these  burlesques  contained ; 
they  were  as  bits  of  mud  thrown  at  the 
poet's  mantle,  yet  so  foul  was  their  nature 
that  at  length  Jules  Janin  uttered  an  indig- 
nant protest  against  their  odious  nonsense. 
The  poet  himself  did  not  deign  to  notice  in- 
sults emanating  from  so  low  a  source;  he 
felt  himself  strong  enough  to  despise  his 
traducers,  confident  that  he  should  gain  re- 
nown in  spite  of  his  violation  of  antiquated 
rules,  and  that  he  should  rise  to  be  admired 
in  defiance  of  the  public  and  the  press. 
Calm  and  undisturbed  he  continued  his  work, 
and  his  fame  emerged  all  the  greater  from 
the  wranglings  and  disputes. 

' '  Marion  Delorme  "  was  succeeded  by  ' '  Le 
Roi  s' Amuse, "which  Victor  Hugo  began  on 
the  1st  of  June,  1832,  and  finished  during  one 
of  the  periods  of  disturbance  that  were  so 
frequent  in  Louis  Philippe's  reign.  Immedi- 
ately afterwards  he  wrote  "  Lucyece  Borgia." 


106 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


M.  Taylor,  having  heard  of  the  completion 
of  the  two  dramas,  the  first  of  which  was  in 
verse  and  the  second  in  prose,  put  in  his  claim 
for  "  Le  Roi  s' Amuse."  The  author  acceded 
to  his  request,  and  the  piece  was  at  once  re- 
hearsed, M.  Ligier  appearing  as  Triboulet,  M. 
Joanny  as  St.Vallier,  M.  Perrier  as  Fra^ois 
L,  and  Mile.  Anai's  as  Blanche. 

The  rehearsals  went  on  quietly  enough 
through  the  summer,  and  by  November  ev- 
erything was  ready  for  the  performance, when 
M.  d'Argout,  the  minister  for  the  time  being, 
sent  for  the  manuscript.  As  the  censorship 
was  presumed  to  be  abolished,  the  author  re- 
fused to  comply  with  the  demand,  but  went 
to  call  upon  M.  d'Argout,  who  he  found  had 
been  informed  by  some  one  that  "Le  Roi 
s' Amuse"  contained  certain  allusions  that 
were  derogatory  to  Louis  Philippe.  Victor 
Hugo  emphatically  denied  the  application, 
and  asserted  that  in  depicting  Francois  I.  in 
his  true  historical  colors  he  had  no  more 
thought  of  Louis  Philippe  than  he  had 
thought  of  Charles  X.  in  depicting  Louis 
XIII. 

The  minister  yielded  to  his  representations, 
and  the  first  performance  took  place  on  No- 
vember 22, 1832. 

Just  as  usual  the  young  men  were  at  their 
posts,  with  Theophile  Gautier  and  Celestin 
Nanteuil  at  their  head;  but  "young  France  " 
was  now  beginning  to  interest  itself  in  poli- 
tics, and  as  the  elite  of  beauty  and  fashion  en- 
tered the  boxes  they  were  not  greeted  as  be- 
fore by  rounds  of  applause,  but  by  the  strains 
of  the  "Marseillaise  "  and  "La  Carmagnole." 
The  effect  produced  upon  the  habitues  of  the 
Theatre  Franpais  may  be  more  easily  imag- 
ined than  described.  To  crown  all,  just  be- 
fore the  curtain  rose  it  was  reported  that  a 
pistol  had  been  fired  at  the  king;  voices  rose 
high  and  loud,  and  the  house  became  the 
scene  of  a  regular  tumult.  Nevertheless, 
when  the  play  commenced,  the  faithful  "  row- 
dies" who  had  been  the  heroes  in  the  "Her- 
nani "  fight  vigorously  endeavored  to  hold 
their  own  against  the  supporters  of  the  old 
tragic  style. 

"Le  Roi  s' Amuse"  was  more  vehemently 
hissed  than  either  "Hernani"  or  "Marion 
Delorme,"  and  the  press  was  absolutely  mer- 
ciless in  its  criticisms.  To  such  an  extent 
were  men's  minds  blinded  by  their  literary 
fury  that  the  very  journals  that  were  most 
liberal  in  their  politics,  and  most  opposed  to 
Louis  Philippe's  government,  sided  against 
the  poet,  who  at  the  same  time  lost  several 


of  the  friends  on  whom  he  had  thought  he 
might  most  confidently  rely. 
.  The  very  day  after  the  performance  the 
most  astounding  accusations  were  circulated, 
and  some  criticisms  were  published  that 
might  be  described  as  comical  in  their  se- 
verity. 

One  critic,  writing  anonymously,  complain- 
ed that  he  had  hitherto  failed  in  inducing  M. 
Hugo  to  listen  to  truth ;  and  asserted  that 
his  productions  revealed  absolute  weakness 
and  sterility  in  their  conception,  and  betray- 
ed a  vicious  system  that,  instead  of  leading 
to  originality,  only  dragged  him  into  the 
trivial  and  absurd. 

The  writer  continued: 

"M.  Hugo  in  his  former  dramas,  though 
verging  on  the  grotesque,  has  hitherto  pre- 
served some  faint  idea  of  the  good  and  beau- 
tiful, some  semblance  of  sentiment,  of  moral- 
ity and  propriety.  In  '  Le  Roi  s' Amuse '  he 
has  overstepped  all  bounds :  history,  reason, 
morality,  artistic  dignity,  and  refinement  are 
all  trampled  underfoot.  Such  is  his  prog- 
ress. .  .  .  He  traduces  historical  personages, 
such  as  Francis  I.  and  Clement  Marot,  the 
poet;  .  .  .  the  conversation  of  the  courtiers 
is  far  from  edifying  ;  .  .  .  the  whole  piece  is 
monstrous ;  history  is  set  at  nought,  and  the 
most  noble  characters  are  slandered  and  vil- 
ified. .  .  .  The  play  is  entirely  void  of  inter- 
est, and  the  horrible,  the  mean,  and  the  im- 
moral are  all  jumbled  together  into  a  kind 
of  chaos. 

"The  performance  was  scandalized  by  a 
madcap  set  of  the  author's  partisans,  who,  in 
return  for  every  hiss,  shouted  out  'Down 
with  the  idiots!  Turn  out  the  fools!'  This 
carefully  organized  band  had  been  introduced 
into  the  house  before  the  proper  hour,  and 
made  it  their  business  to  applaud  most  what- 
ever the  public  received  with  most  disgust. 
In  spite,  however,  of  the  strenuous  efforts  of 
these  extraordinary  claqueurs,  the  hissing  was 
so  overpowering  that  M.  Hugo's  name  was 
drowned  in  the  tumult.  Notwithstanding  the 
utter  failure  of  the  piece,  a  second  perform- 
ance is  all  the  same  announced  for  Thursday 
next." 

Such  was  the  treatment  accorded  to  what 
is  now  acknowledged  to  be  one  of  the  most 
admirable  works  of  the  modern  stage,  and 
one  of  the  finest  tragic  poems  that  have  ever 
been  conceived.  And  it  is  with  ill-disguised 
delight  that  the  critic  appends  to  his  venom-' 
ous  article  a  postscript: 

"We  learn  this  evening  that  the  prime- 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


107 


minister  has  issued  an  order  to  stop  the  per- 
formance of  the  piece." 

Incredible  as  it  may  seem,  the  intelligence 
was  perfectly  true.  The  constitutional  mon- 
archy was  acting  in  precisely  the  same  way  as 
the  monarchy  that  ruled  "by  right  divine." 

Academicians  and  deputies  had  betaken 
themselves  with  all  speed  to  the  minister,  and 
informed  him  that  "Le  Roi  s' Amuse"  was 
not  a  simple  outrage  on  good  taste  and  pub' 
lie  morality,  it  was  absolutely  indecent;  and, 
moreover,  contained  disrespectful  allusions 
to  Louis  Philippe,  and  all  this  just  at  the 
very  time  when  assassins  were  making  a  tar- 
get of  his  sacred  head. 

The  minister  straightway  summoned  a 
council,  and  the  council  decided  that  such  a 
scandal  could  not  be  tolerated.  Hence  it 
came  to  pass  that  just  as  Victor  Hugo  was 
going  to  breakfast  he  received  the  following 
note  from  M.  Jouslin  de  la  Salle,  who  had 
formerly  been  manager  of  the  Porte-Saint- 
Martin,  and  was  now  manager  of  the  Theatre 

Francais : 

"Nov.  23. 

"It  is  now  half -past  ten,  and  I  have  just 
received  orders  to  suspend  the  performances 
of  'Le  Roi  s' Amuse.'  M.Taylor  has  made 
the  communication  to  me  on  behalf  of  the 
prime-minister." 

It  was  Victor  Hugo's  first  impression  that 
there  must  be  some  mistake.  Not  being  able 
to  credit  a  proceeding  that  seemed  at  once  so 
senseless  and  so  overbearing,  he  ran  to  the 
theatre,  but  only  to  find  the  information  con- 
firmed, and  to  be  told  that ' '  the  minister  had 
given  the  order  in  virtue  of  his  divine  minis- 
terial right.  There  was  no  other  reason  to 
be  alleged." 

The  Comedie  Fran9aise,  whose  proposal  to 
submit  his  drama  to  the  censorship  Victor 
Hugo  had  indignantly  rejected,  were  quite 
bewildered,  and  made  some  efforts  to  get  the 
decision  reversed ;  but  all  their  attempts  were 
utterly  vain,  as  not  only  was  the  order  of 
suspension  confirmed,  but  a  formal  prohibi- 
tion was  issued.  The  objectionable  words 
"Le  Roi  s' Amuse"  were  to  be  erased  from 
the  play -bills  under  the  penalty  of  with- 
drawal of  the  license  from  the  theatre. 

Thus  deprived  of  his  rights,  and  thwarted 
in  his  professional  occupation,  the  poet  was 
not  going  to  humiliate  himself  by  hanging 
about  the  doors  of  ministerial  antechambers. 
He  considered  that  to  ask  a  favor  of  a  power 
was  to  recognize  its  authority,  and  conse- 
quently he  resolved  to  make  a  wider  appeal. 


Two  tribunals  were  open  to  him:  he  would 
appeal  to  public  opinion,  and  he  would  ap- 
peal to  a  court  of  justice. 

In  a  manifesto  which  he  addressed  to  the 
public  he  writes : 

' '  It  appears  that  those  who  appoint  them- 
selves our  censors  profess  to  be  scandalized 
by  'Le  Roi  s' Amuse;'  the  piece  has  shocked 
the  modesty  of  the  gendarmes;  the  Leotaud 
brigade  has  voted  it  obscene ;  the  chamber  of 
morals  has  put  its  hands  before  its  eyes,  and 
M.  Vidocq  has  been  made  to  blush.  In  short, 
the  watchword  that  has  been  lisped  for  some 
days  around  us  has  now  been  given  to  thw 
police — the  piece  is  im  moral !  Come,  my  good 
sirs,  and  let  us  look  into  the  matter. 

"Do  you  really  believe  there  is  any  immo- 
rality in  the  play?  Listen  and  see !  Tribou- 
let  is  deformed,  he  is  sickly,  and  he  is  court 
fool ;  this  triple  misfortune  causes  his  weak- 
ness. Triboulet  hates  the  king  because  he  is 
a  king,  he  hates  the  aristocracy  because  they 
are  the  aristocracy,  and  he  hates  men  in  gen- 
eral because  they  have  not  all  got  a  hump 
upon  their  back.  He  depraves,  corrupts,  and 
brutalizes  the  king;  he  spurs  him  on  to  igno- 
rance, tyranny,  and  vice;  he  sets  him  loose 
in  the  bosoms  of  reputable  families,  pointing 
him  out  the  wife  to  corrupt,  the  sister  to  se- 
duce, and  the  daughter  to  dishonor.  One 
day,  in  the  middle  of  some  festival,  just  as  he 
is  urging  the  king  to  elope  with  the  wife  of 
M.  de  Cosse,  M.  de  Saint  -Vallier  makes  his 
way  up  to  the  monarch,  and  reproaches  him 
with  having  dishonored  Diane  de  Poitiers, 
his  daughter.  Triboulet  commences  insult- 
ing the  parent  whom  the  king  has  thus  in- 
jured, and  the  father  then  raises  his  hand  and 
utters  a  fearful  curse.  This  is  the  turning- 
point  of  the  piece. 

' '  Triboulet,  upon  whom  the  curse  has  thus 
fallen,  is  not,  after  all,  a  man  utterly  without 
heart.  He  has  a  daughter,  Blanche,  whom 
he  has  nurtured  in  a  solitary  house  in  a  de- 
serted place  far  away  from  the  eyes  of  the 
world.  He  is  bringing  her  up  in  purity  and 
faith  and  innocence.  His  great  fear  is  lest 
she  should  fall  into  the  wickedness,  the  mis- 
ery of  which  he  knows  so  well. 

"  Now  it  falls  out  that  the  curse  of  old  De 
Saint -Vallier  overtakes  Triboulet  through 
this  one  object  of  his  love.  The  very  king 
who  has  been  encouraged  in  vileness  by  Tri- 
boulet seduces  Triboulet's  child.  The  fool  is 
smitten  by  an  avenging  fate  in  exactly  the 
same  way  as  the  man  who  cursed  him  had 
been  smitten  before  him. 


108 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  WS   TIM  I-:. 


"Then  Triboulct  lays  a  snare  for  the  king, 
who  has  carried  off  his  daughter,  but  into 
this  the  daughter  falls  and  Incomes  a  victim. 
Thus  Triboulet  has  had  two  pupils  —  the 
monarch  whom  he  1ms  led  into  vice,  and  his 
chilil  whom  he  has  educated  in  virtue — and 
the  former  becomes  the  destroyer  of  the  hit 
ter.  The  result  happens  in  this  way.  In  his 
design  to  carry  off  Madame  de  Cosse  for  the 
king,  he  carries  off  his  own  child;  and  then, 
in  attempting  to  avenge  himself  upon  the 
royal  seducer,  he  assassinates  that  child  with 
his  own  hand.  Vengeance  is  not  stayed  half- 
way— the  curse  of  the  father  of  Diane  is  ac- 
complished upon  the  father  of  Blanche. 

"Whether  this  idea  is  dramatic,  it  is  not 
for  me  to  decide.  All  that  I  contend  for  is 
that  it  is  not  immoral." 

In  a  long  preface,  published  on  the  last 
day  of  this  month,  after  giving  a  dignified 
and  wholesome  caution  to  the  ill-advised 
power,  the  poet  goes  on  to  say  that  the  mat- 
ter must  not  be  regarded  as  a  petty  literary 
coup  d'etat,  but  must  be  considered  as  touch- 
ing the  general  property  and  liberty.  In  ac- 
cordance with  this,  he  announces  his  inten- 
tion to  have  the  cause  pleaded  judicial!}-, 
and  to  institute  a  suit  before  the  Board  of 
Trade:  first,  to  compel  the  Theatre  Francais 
to  perform  "  Le  Roi  s' Amuse;"  and,  second- 
ly, to  compel  the  government  to  sanction  the 
performance. 

The  trial  commenced  on  the  19th  of  De- 
cember, 1832. 

All  the  journals,  and  especially  the  Debats, 
record  that  large  crowds  assembled  to  hear 
the  case.  As  early  as  nine  o'clock  in  the 
morning  hundreds  of  people  stood  waiting 
en  queue  in  the  galleries  of  the  Palais  de  la 
Bourse,  where  the  Board  of  Trade  then  held 
its  sittings. 

The  court  was  divided  into  four  parts :  the 
enclosure  of  the  tribunal, which  was  general- 
ly filled  with  a  select  audience,  chiefly  com- 
posed of  fashionably  dressed  ladies,  assem- 
bled long  before  the  hour  of  hearing;  the 
bar,  reserved  for  solicitors,  barristers, and  po- 
litical celebrities;  the  third  part  was  a  space 
into  which  some  privileged  spectators  were 
admitted  as  into  the  pit  of  a  theatre;  while 
at  the  rear  was  the  compartment  allotted  to 
the  general  public. 

At  noon  the  doors  were  opened,  and  a  few 
minutes  sufficed  to  fill  every  corner  to  over- 
flowing. Even  the  hall  of  the  Pas-Perdus,  a 
spacious  vestibule  separated  from  the  court 
by  glass  doors,  was  crowded  with  an  eager 


multitude.  As  Victor  Hugo  entered  with 
his  counsel  he  was  loudly  cheered,  the  spec- 
tators mounting  their  seats  to  get  a  better 
view;  and  it  was  amid  great  excitement  that 
the  officials,  under  the  presidency  of  M.  Aube. 
took  their  seats. 

The  double  action  was  then  commenced. 
The  first  was  Victor  Hugo's  claim  upon  the 
Theatre  Frangais;  the  second  was  the  de- 
mand for  compensation  by  the  Comedie 
Francaise  from  M.  d'Argout,  the  Minister  of 
Trade  and  Public  Works,  as  having  jurisdic- 
tion over  the  theatres. 

M.  Chaix  d'Est-Angc  opened  the  pleadings 
as  counsel  for  the  minister  of  the  crown. 
He  commenced  by  proposing  that  the  court 
should  declare  itself  incompetent  to  give 
judgment  in  these  proceedings,  as  it  was  not 
provided  with  powers  of  administration. 

Victor  Hugo's  counsel,  M.  Odilon  Barrot, 
rose  and  opposed  this  motion  in  a  brilliant 
speech.  He  described  his  client's  mission 
as  one  of  talent  and  of  genius,  and  claimed 
not  only  for  him  in  particular,  but  for  au- 
thors in  general,  the  right  of  liberty  of 
thought  in  the  production  of  dramatic  com- 
positions. He  called  forth  protests  and 
shouts  of  ironical  laughter  from  the  audi- 
ence by  making  the  advocate  of  the  Come- 
die Francaise  read  the  document  in  which 
the  Comte  d'Argout  had  prohibited  the  per- 
formance of  "Le  Roi  s' Amuse,"  because 
"many  passages  therein  were  an  outrage 
upon  public  morals;"  and  he  reminded  the 
court  that  the  functions  of  the  censorship 
had  been  abolished  by  charter  in  1830,  and 
how  M.  de  Montalivet,  the  Minister  of  the 
Interior,  had  endorsed  the  scheme  for  the 
management  of  theatres  with  the  sentence 
"The  censorship  is  dead."  He  wound  up 
by  claiming  damages  from  the  Comedie 
Francaise  for  the  non-fulfilment  of  their 
covenant. 

The  reply  of  the  counsel  for  the  Comedie 
Francaise  produced  such  a  tumult  that  the 
President  had  to  order  one  section  of  the 
court  to  be  cleared  and  the  adjoining  vesti- 
bule to  be  closed. 

Victor  Hugo  then  came  forward,  and  in  an 
effective  speech,  which  he  had  prepared  be- 
forehand, he  argued  that  his  suit  had  no  oth- 
er origin  than  the  illegal  order  of  the  minis- 
ter, an  order  which,  as  he  had  no  right  to 
make  it,  the  stage  had  no  call  to  follow.  Af- 
ter asserting  that  the  government  was  gradu- 
ally withdrawing  from  the  French  people 
rights  and  privileges  which  forty  years  of 


TRIBOULET  IN    "LE  BOX  S' AMUSE. 


110 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  MS   TIME. 


revolution  had  secured  to  them,  he  conclud- 
ed by  saying : 

"To-day  a  censor  deprives  me  of  my  lib- 
erty as  a  poet;  to-morrow  a  gendarme  will 
deprive  me  of  my  liberty  as  a  citizen.  To- 
day I  am  banished  from  the  theatre ;  to-mor- 
row I  shall  be  banished  from  the  country. 
To-day  I  am  gagged;  to-morrow  I  shall  be 
transported.  To-day  there  is  a  state  of  siege 
in  the  commonwealth  of  letters;  to-morrow 
there  will  be  a  state  of  siege  in  the  city.  No 
lonirer  do  we  hear  of  privilege,  of  security, 
of  the-  charter,  or  of  the  public  rights.  Noth- 
ing of  the  sort.  But  the  government  must 
li>i(  11  to  advice.  It  must  stay  its  downward 
course;  otherwise  we  shall  soon  have  once 
more  the  despotism  of  1807,  barring  its  glory !" 

These  fine  and  prophetic  words  were  greet- 
ed with  fresh  bursts  of  applause. 

M.  Chaix  d'Est-Ange  replied,  and  the  court 
rose. 

As  Victor  Hugo  passed  through  the  wait- 
ing crowds  on  his  way  home,  he  was  loudly 
cheered. 

A  fortnight  afterwards  judgment  was  giv- 
en in  favor  of  the  minister. 

The  poet  was  not  in  the  least  discouraged 
by  the  sentence,  which  was  only  what  he  had 
anticipated.  Genius  is  patient;  it  is  con- 
scious that  it  can  afford  to  wait,  and  nothing 
can  divert  it  from  its  course. 

M.  Paul  Foucher,  in  his  interesting  book 
"Entre  Cour  et  Jardin,"  has  described  how, 
on  the  night  of  the  first  performance  of  "Le 
Roi  s' Amuse, "when  the  whole  theatre  was 
in  an  uproar,  so  that  Hugo's  name  was 
drowned  in  the  sea  of  roaring  voices,  the  au- 
thor's face  exhibited  no  sign  of  despondency 
at  the  failure  any  more  than  it  had  shown 
passion  or  excitement  during  the  struggle. 
His  Olympian  brow  had  withstood  the  tem- 
pest with  the  firmness  of  a  rock,  and  after 
the  curtain  fell  he  went  to  offer  his  thanks 
and  encouragements  to  the  actors  and  act- 
resses, saying, 

"You  are  a  little  discomposed  to-night; 
but  you  will  find  it  different  the  day  after  to- 
morrow !" 

In  spite  of  the  hissing,  he  was  sanguine 
about  his  play;  nevertheless,  it  was  not  des- 
tined to  be  repeated. 

"  Hernani "  had  been  performed  fifty-three 
times,  ' '  Marion  Delorme "  sixty-one ;  "  Le 
Roi  s' Amuse  "  appeared  once,  and  has  never 
been  put  upon  the  stage  again.  Since  his 
last  return  to  Paris  the  poet  has  at  various 
times  been  solicited  to  authorize  its  repro- 


duction ;  but,  although  he  has  offered  no  op- 
position, the  performance  has  never  taken 
place.  The  part  of  Triboulet  is  undoubted- 
ly very  difficult,  and  it  is  feared  might  over- 
task the  powers  of  the  actor;  but,  on  the  oth- 
er hand,  it  has  been  reported,  though  perhaps 
in  mere  gossip,  that  the  role  has  been  covet- 
ed by  several  performers  of  equal  ability, 
and  that  their  mutual  rivalry  has  created  an 
impediment  to  the  representation  of  the 
piece  upon  the  stage.  It  is  to  be  trusted, 
however,  that  the  obstacle,  whatever  it  \#, 
will  not  prove  to  be  insurmountable,  and 
that  there  will  be  a  chance  before  long  of 
witnessing  a  cJwf-d'ceuvre  that  succumbed 
originally  to  an  attack  at  once  so  violent  and 
so  ridiculous. 

The  ministerial  organs  in  France  in  1832 
were  by  no  means  satisfied  with  the  final 
prohibition  of  the  play.  Irritated  beyond 
measure  by  Victor  Hugo's  proud  and  defiant 
attitude,  the  official  journals  began  to  load 
him  with  reproaches  because  he  continued  to 
receive  the  original  pension  of  two  thousand 
francs  which  had  been  granted  to  him  as  well 
as  to  Lamartine. 

We  have  already  seen  how  the  poet,  as  a 
matter  of  conscience,  had  declined  accepting 
the  increase  of  pension  offered  by  Charles  X. 
as  compensation  for  the  interdiction  of  "Ma- 
rion Delorme. "  Hitherto, however, he  had  ex- 
perienced no  scruples  as  to  the  propriety  of 
his  receiving  pecuniary  assistance  from  the 
nation,  and  it  was  only  in  consequence  of 
many  virulent  attacks  in  certain  newspapers 
that  he  sent  a  letter,  marked  by  moderation 
and  reserve,  but  still  full  of  dignity,  in  which 
he  tendered  his  resignation  of  the  pension. 
M.  d'Argout  remonstrated  with  him,  but  he 
adhered  to  his  resolution,  and  refused  to  re- 
ceive the  money  any  longer,  although  at  that 
time  his  resources  were  far  from  consider- 
able. 

His  line  of  action,  magnanimous  as  it  was, 
did  not  have  much  effect  in  mitigating  the 
severity  of  his  reviewers.  Nevertheless,  al- 
though they  continued  to  depreciate  his  pow- 
er as  a  dramatic  author,  they  began  to  do 
some  justice  to  him  as  a  poet;  and  one  of  his 
most  inveterate  enemies,  Gustave  Planche, 
was  fain  to  acknowledge  that  in  manip- 
ulation of  language  "Victor  Hugo  is  unri- 
valled, because  he  wields  the  French  idiom 
at  his  will;  he  forges  it  as  solid  as  iron,  he, 
tempers  it  like  steel,  he  engraves  it  as  silver, 
he  moulds  it  like  bronze,  he  chisels  it  as  mar- 
ble; the  blades  of  Toledo  are  not  keener, 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS  TIME. 


Ill 


nor  the  mosaics  of  Florence  more  delicate, 
than  the  verses  which  his  skilful  workman- 
ship has  produced." 

And  Planche,  hard  and  spiteful  as  he  often 
is,  has  said  even  more:  he  has  owned  that 
when  he  witnessed  Triboulet's  grief  in  the 
play  he  was  overcome  with  admiration  and 
moved  to  tears;  and  what  stronger  testimo- 
ny than  such  a  confession  could  be  rendered 
in  praise  of  a  dramatist  whose  leading  aim  it 
was  to  excite  the  emotions  of  his  audience? 

The  violence  of  the  outcry  against  Victor 
Hugo's  last  work  had  no  permanent  effect  in 
discouraging  the  theatrical  managers,  and  be- 
fore the  end  of  1832  M.  Harel  sought  the 
author's  permission  to  perform  his  drama, 
hitherto  unpublished,  of  "Le  Souper  si  Fer- 
rare, "  the  title  originally  given  to  ' '  Lucrece 
Borgia. " 

M.  Harel's  company  at  that  time  included 
Frederic  Lemaitre  and  Mile.  Georges.  This 
lady,  though  no  longer  young,  having  been 
born  in  1786,  still  retained  an  extraordinary 
beauty.  Not  only  had  she  a  figure  which 
might  have  enraptured  Phidias,  but  her  mar- 
vellous form  was  animated  by  intelligence, 
passion,  and  genius;  a  true  soul  underlay  her 
chiselled  grace.  Frederick  Lemaitre,  too, 
was  in  the  zenith  of  his  talent. 

The  proposal  was  accepted,  and,  Delafosse 
taking  the  part  of  Don  Alphonse  d'Este,  and 
Mile.  Juliette  that  of  the  Princess  Negroni, 
the  rehearsals  commenced  forthwith. 

Every  rehearsal  was  made  with  closed 
doors,  and  the  author  declined  admitting 
even  his  brother  Abel  to  the  dress  rehearsal 
on  the  night  preceding  the  first  public  per- 
formance. The  slightest  indiscretion  was 
known  to  be  enough  to  feed  the  fury  of 
Hugo's  traducers,  and  he  wished  to  avoid 
any  of  the  scenes  of  his  drama  being  hawked 
about  the  city  and  made  the  subject  of  ridi- 
cule. He  could  not,  however,  find  it  in  his 
heart  to  resist  the  entreaties  of  Sainte-Beuve, 
who  always  professed  himself  the  most  sin- 
cere and  devoted  of  friends.  Having  ob- 
tained permission  to  witness  the  rehearsal, 
he  came,  listened  most  attentively,  congratu- 
lated the  author  most  warmly  on  his  produc- 
tion, and  then  went  out  and  circulated  it 
everywhere  that  "Lucrece  Borgia"  was  an 
utter  piece  of  absurdity. 

The  incident  was  but  a  type  of  this  man's 
character.  It  was  solely  due  to  his  treachery 
and  infamous  gossip  that  on  the  morning  of 
the  day  on  which  the  piece  was  to  be  per- 
formed in  the  evening,  several'  newspapers 


announced  that  they  were  in  possession  of 
the  plot,  and  that  the  whole  production  was 
in  the  highest  degree  obscene,  depicting  or- 
gies terrible  and  indecent  beyond  conception. 

In  spite  of  everything,  however,  the  per- 
formance was  a  complete  triumph;  not  only 
was  the  name  of  the  author  received  with  ac- 
clamation, but  he  was  summoned  by  the  au- 
dience to  appear  before  the  curtain,  though 
to  this,  notwithstanding  M.  Harel's  entreaties, 
he  refused  to  consent.  The  crowd  then 
awaited  his  departure  from  the  theatre,  stop- 
ped the  cab  in  which  he  was  riding,  and  com- 
pelled him  to  return  home  on  foot  escorted 
by  hundreds  of  admirers  cheering  him  as  he 
went. 

Faithful  to  his  compact  with  himself,  Vic- 
tor Hugo  had  returned  to  art  as  the  devotion 
of  his  life;  indeed,  he  had  recommenced  his 
labor  before  he  had  quite  settled  with  the 
petty  political  adversaries  who  did  their  ut- 
most to  distract;  within  six  months  after  one 
drama  had  been  proscribed  he  was  ready 
with  another,  thus  demonstrating  to  the  gov- 
ernment that  its  hostility  had  been  in  vain, 
|  and  that  art  and  liberty  can,  as  it  were,  spring 
up  in  a  night,  though  a  clumsy  foot  should 
trample  them  down.  Henceforth  it  should 
be  his  resolve  to  continue  his  political  strug- 
gle simultaneously  with  his  literary  toil;  he 
|  would  maintain  his  public  rights  without 
giving  up  his  private  pursuits.  Man  has  two 
hands,  he  said;  one  must  fulfil  one  task,  and 
i  one  another. 

In  forming  his  own  estimate  of  the  dramas 
that  he  had  last  finished,  Victor  Hugo  vent- 
ured to  predict  that  some  day  ' '  Le  Roi 
s' Amuse"  would  prove  to  be  the  principal 
political  era,  and  "  Lucr£ce  Borgia  "  the  prin- 
cipal literary  era,  of  his  life,  asserting  that  the 
two  works,  though  different  in  form  and  de- 
sign, were  in  reality  the  outcome  of  the  same 
idea. 

Both  represent  deformities — the  one  physi- 
cal and  hideous ;  but  Triboulet,  miserable  as 
he  is,  has  a  soul,  and  in  that  soul  exists  the 
purest  sentiment  that  appertains  to  man, 
paternal  love — a  power  that  transforms  his 
degraded  nature  into  something  that  approx- 
imates to  the  sublime. 

"  Lucr&ce  Borgia"  represents  a  deformity 
no  less  complete  and  equally  repulsive;  but 
hers  is  a  moral  deformity,  and  yet  it  is  re- 
lieved by  the  purest  sentiment  that  apper- 
tains to  woman,  maternal  love. 

These  are  his  words: 

"  Embody  a  mother  even  within  a  monster, 


112 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS  TIME. 


and  the  monster  will  not  fail  to  excite  inter- 
est, and  may  be  sympathy.  .  .  .  Physical  de- 
formity, sanctified  by  paternal  love,  this  is 
what  you  have  in  '  Le  Hoi  s' Amuse ;'  moral 
deformity,  purified  by  maternal  love,  this  is 
what  you  find  in  'Lucrece  Borgia.'  " 
Convinced  that  social  problems  are  by  no 


pict  the  misery  to  which  humanity  is  heir,  it 
is  fitting  that  the  veil  of  some  serious  and 
condoling  thought  should  IK-  thrown  over  the 
naked  truth,  which  in  itself  would  be  too 
painful  to  contemplate. 

Nowadays    no   one    fails   to   discern    the 
philosophy    of    Victor    Hugo's    dramatic 


MLLE.  GEORGES  AS  LUCKECE   BOKGIA. 


means  independent  of  literary  matters,  Victor 
Hugo  has  consistently  maintained  that  an 
audience  ought  never  to  be  allowed  to  leave 
a  theatrical  spectacle  without  carrying  away 
some  instinct  of  morality  both  deep  and  stern ; 
but,  at  the  same  time,  whenever  it  becomes 
necessary  to  lay  open  the  wounds  and  to  de- 


works,  but  the  triumph  of  "Lucrece  Bor- 
gia "  was  unquestionably  a  memorable  epoch 
in  his  career.  He  was  then  thirty  years  of  age. 
But  the  enthusiasm  of  the  general  public 
had  not  by  any  means  the  effect  of  bringing 
the  classics  to  consider  themselves  defeated. 
Armand  Carrel  remained  inflexibly  among 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


113 


the  ranks  of  the  irreconcilables,  and  criticised 
the  play  somewhat  captiously,  although  he 
could  not  help  acknowledging  that  it  was 
skilfully  put  together,  and  that  it  was  in  gen- 
eral conformity  with  historical  tradition,  in- 
asmuch as  "Lucrece  Borgia"  was  the  true 
Lucrece  of  the  legend,  having  the  mingled 


is  one  in  verse  which  should  hardly  be  passed 
over  in  silence,  if  only  on  account  of  its  mer- 
cilessness.  It  was  by  Destigny,  whose  name 
we  have  already  had  occasion  to  mention. 
The  vindictive  poet,  in  his  angry  indignation, 
commences  by  designating  Victor  Hugo  as 
"A  Homer  waiting  on  a  harlot's  will;" 


MLLE.  JULIETTE   AS   PRINCESS  NEGRONI. 


blood  of  the  courtesan  and  of  the  pope  flow- 1  and,  not  satisfied  with  this  shameful  appella- 
ing  in  her  veins. 

Parodies,  of  course,  did  not  fail  to  be  forth- 
coming, but  none  of  them  were  worthy  of 
special  notice. 

Among  the  satires,  however,  that  were  pub- 
lished after  the  performance  of  the  drama  there 


tion,  proceeds  to  say, 

"  Behold  the  produce  of  your  mediaeval  stage ! 
Lust  and  adultery  it  counsels  to  our  age. 
In  mercy's  name,  no  more  these  ancient  crimes  ex- 
hume, 
But  leave  the  Borgias  in  their  own  polluted  tomb  ! 


114 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  UIS   TIME. 


Or  this  be  sure,  ye  playwrights  infamous  and  vile, 
Tis  yon  that  all  our  womeu  and  our  youth  defile." 

The  author  had  the  satisfaction  of  bestow- 
ing his  unqualified  approval  upon  all  the  in- 
terpreters of  his  work.  He  congratulated 
Frederic  Lemaltre,  whose  easy  yet  dignified 
grace, terrible  yet  tender.manly  yet  childlike, 
modest  yet  severe,  had  fully  realized  the  Gen- 
uaro  of  his  own  conception.  He  tendered 
his  acknowledgments  to  Mile.  Georges,  who, 
in  vengeance,  in  chastisement,  and  in  insult, 
was  ever  the  great  tragedienne;  and  he  com- 
plimented Mile.  Juliette,  who,  though  she 
merely  represented  an  apparition,  threw  such 
vivid  animation  into  the  beautiful  counte- 
nance of  the  young  Princess  Negroni,  and 
gave  such  force  to  the  few  words  she  had 
to  utter,  that  she  revealed  a  talent  that  was 
conspicuous  in  spirit,  passion,  and  truth. 

It  was  long  since  the  Theatre  de  la  Porte- 
Saint-Martin  had  realized  profits  so  large, 
and  the  manager  lost  no  time  in  claiming  an- 
other piece  from  the  author.  His  demand, 
however,  was  made  in  such  a  way  as  not  only 


to  excite  the  anger  of  Victor  Hugo,  but  the 
quarrel  became  so  violent  that  a  duel  was  de- 
termined upon. 

Happily,  while  the  seconds  were  arranging 
the  details  of  meeting,  the  parties  came  to 
terms.  M.  Harel  acknowledged  himself  in 
the  wrong,  but  still  held  to  his  claim  for  a 
new  drama.  Victor  Hugo  acquiesced  in  the 
demand,  and  at  the  end  of  August  the  iras- 
cible manager  was  informed  that  "Marie 
Tudor  "  had  been  completed,  and  that  it  was 
quite  at  his  service. 

Before  concluding  this  notice  of  "  Lucrece 
Borgia,"  or  rather  of  its  first  performance  (for 
the  reproduction  of  Victor  Hugo's  dramas 
will  have  to  be  recorded  subsequently),  it 
should  be  mentioned  that  an  opera  called 
"  Lucrezia  Borgia"  was  performed  hi  Milan, 
at  the  Teatro  della  Scala,  in  1834.  It  was 
afterwards  introduced  at  the  Theatre  Italien, 
in  Paris,  when  Victor  Hugo  was  obliged  to 
assert  his  claim  to  the  copyright. 

A  similar  difficulty  afterwards  arose  about 
' '  Ernani,"  but  the  matter  was  settled  amicably. 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS  TIME. 


115 


CHAPTER  XV. 

"Marie  Tudor." — Mile.  Georges. — "Angelo." — Rivalry  between  Mile.  Mars  and  Madame  Dorval.  —  "La 
Esmeralda." —  Fatality. —  "Ray  Bias." — M.  Auguste  Vacquerie  at  the  First  Performance.  —  "Les  Bur- 
graves." — Victor  Hugo's  Determination. — Unpublished  Works. — Underhand  Dealings  of  Tragic  Writers. 
— M.Ponsard's  "Lucrece." — Love  on  the  Classic  Stage. — Literary  Types. — A  Successful  Lawsuit. 


ORIGINALLY  entitled ' '  Marie  d'Angleterre," 
the  play  of  "Marie  Tudor"  was  performed 
at  the  Porte-Saint-Martin  on  the  6th  of  No- 
vember, 1833. 

This  important  piece  cannot  be  analyzed 
here,  but  it  must  suffice  to  say  that  its  inter- 
est as  an  historical  drama  concentrates  itself 
"upon  the  terrible  reality  of  the  formidable 
trio  so  often  found  in  history,  and  here  so 
fully  depicted — a  queen,  a  favorite,  and  an 
executioner." 

The  play,  which  covers  a  period  of  three 
days,  is  in  prose.  It  is  touching,  full  of  bold 
and  novel  incident,  and  presents  a  striking 
picture  of  the  civil  discords  in  England  at 
the  time. 

M.  Harel,  the  manager,  threw  repeated  ob- 
stacles in  the  way  of  its  production;  but  in 
spite  of  the  hisses  that  never  failed  to  be 
the  accompaniment  of  Victor  Hugo's  "first 
nights,"  the  piece  turned  out  a  complete  suc- 
cess. 

Mile.  Georges  played  Marie  with  all  her 
wonted  fire  and  talent.  In  his  Notices  Roman- 
tiques,Theophile  Gautier  eulogizes  her  acting 
in  this  way:  "It  is  with  ever  dazzled  be- 
wilderment that  we  recall  the  smile  with 
which  she  opened  the  second  act,  as  she  lay 
half  reclining  on  a  pile  of  cushions,  dressed 
in  orange-colored  velvet  slashed  with  silver 
brocade,  her  royal  hand  lightly  touching  the 
brown  curls  of  Fabiano  Fabiani,  who  knelt 
at  her  side.  Her  pearl-white  profile  stood 
out  from  a  rich  and  sombre  background;  she 
seemed  to  glitter,  and,  as  it  were,  to  be  bathed 
in  light ;  her  beauty  flashed  with  brilliant 
gleams,  and  presented  the  perfect  personifica- 
tion of  power  inebriated  by  love.  Before  she 
uttered  a  word,  thunders  of  applause  were 
heard  from  the  pit  to  the  roof  of  the  house. " 

But  this  applause  was  not  long  maintained. 
The  piece  had  not  proceeded  much  further 
when  Mile.  Georges  was  vehemently  hissed, 
as  was  also  Mile.  Juliette,  who  took  the  part 
of  Jane. 


Yet  in  spite  of  this  adverse  reception,  and 
in  defiance,  moreover,  of  the  ridicule  of  Gus- 
tave  Planche  and  his  brother  critics,  the  piece 
continued  to  draw,  the  proceeds  being  very 
satisfactory,  and  the  representations  numer- 
ous. 

Nearly  eighteen  months  now  elapsed  be- 
fore Victor  Hugo  had  another  drama  ready 
for  the  stage;  but  on  the  28th  of  April,  1835, 
"Angelo,"  also  in  prose,  was  produced  at  the 
Thefitre  FranQais.  In  this  drama  the  author 
has  said  that  it  was  his  design  to  depict  two 
sad  but  contrasted  characters — the  woman  in 
society,  and  the  woman  out  of  society.  The 
one  he  has  endeavored  to  deliver  from  des- 
potism, the  other  he  has  striven  to  defend 
from  contempt;  he  has  shown  the  tempta- 
tions resisted  by  the  virtue  of  the  one,  and 
the  tears  shed  over  her  guilt  by  the  other;  he 
has  cast  blame  where  blame  is  due — upon 
man  in  his  strength,  and  upon  society  in  its 
absurdity.  In  contrariety  to  the  two  women, 
he  has  delineated  two  men,  the  husband  and 
the  lover,  one  a  sovereign  and  one  an  out- 
law, and  by  various  subordinate  methods  has 
given  a  sort  of  summary  of  the  relations, 
regular  and  irregular,  in  which  a  man  can 
stand  with  a  woman,  on  the  one  hand,  and 
with  society  in  general,  on  the  other. 

In  all  the  dramatic  works  of  this  great 
writer,  which  are  invariably  as  full  of  in- 
struction as  they  are  thrilling  in  interest,  it 
is  ever  by  the  method  of  social  antithesis 
that  he  proceeds  to  his  point.  Every  scene 
of  this  masterpiece  of  skill  is  overflowing 
with  passion,  and  is  written  in  a  vivid  and 
sparkling  style.  It  was  a  triumph  alike  for 
author  and  actor.  Incidents  succeed  one  an- 
other with  rapidity,  and  are  as  startling  in 
then*  ingenuity  as  they  are  natural  in  their 
power  and  touching  in  their  pathos. 

Besides  moving  its  audience  alternately  to 
shouts  of  applause  and  tears  of  sympathy, 
"Angelo"  was  the  cause  of  a  bitter  rivalry 
between  Mile.  Mars  and  Madame  Dorval. 


116 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


Madame  Dorval,  who  had  so  much  de- 
liirlitcd  the  poet  by  her  magnificent  interpre- 
tation of  "Marion  Delorme,"  happened  to 
be  disengaged  at  the  time,  and  Victor  Hugo 
succeeded  in  obtaining  her  services  for  the 
Comedie  Fra^aise,  to  undertake  the  part  of 
C'atarinn  in  the  forthcoming  piece.  Like 
Frederic  Lemaltre,  Madame  Dorval  could 
personify  romantic  genius,  and  to  a  certain 
extent  realized  the  ideal  of  the  writers  of  the 
Renaissance.  Her  feeling,  her  fire,  and  en- 
thuMasm  would  always  bring  down  the 
house.  Her  cry  of  distress  had  all  the  poig- 
nancy of  truth ;  her  sobs  were  heart-rending, 
her  intonation  so  natural,  and  her  tears  so 
perfect  in  their  counterfeited  sincerity,  that 
the  stage  seemed  to  be  utterly  forgotten,  and 
it  appeared  incredible  that  her  agony  was 
only  simulated.  Her  talent  was  essentially 
modern;  she  actually  lived  in  the  ideas,  the 
passions,  the  loves,  the  errors,  of  her  time  ; 
as  a  dramatist,  rather  than  a  tragedienne,  she 
followed  the  fortunes  of  the  literary  reform- 
ers, and  thus  found  herself  in  the  right 
place. 

It  may  easily  be  imagined  that  Mile.  Mars, 
never  remarkable  for  either  amiability  or 
good  temper,  took  considerable  umbrage  at 
this  introduction  of  so  formidable  a  rival; 
the ' '  tragedienne  "  of  long-established  renown 
conducted  herself  with  intolerable  haughti- 
ness towards  the  rising  "dramatist,"  and  to 
such  an  extent  did  her  insolence  increase 
during  the  period  of  the  rehearsals  that  Vic- 
tor Hugo  was  compelled  to  interfere.  Mile. 
Mars  only  gave  in  when  seriously  threatened 
with  the  withdrawal  of  her  role;  but  when- 
ever she  found  herself  in  the  presence  of  an 
audience  all  her  rancor  was  totally  forgot- 
ten, and,  notwithstanding  the  absurd  head- 
gear which  she  persisted  in  wearing,  she 
always  succeeded  in  meriting  the  ovation 
which,  as  well  as  her  rival,  she  was  sure  to 
obtain.  Rachel,  in  later  days,  gained  one  of 
her  grand  triumphs  in  the  part  now  under- 
taken by  Mile.  Mars. 

Shortly  after  the  success  of  "Angelo," 
Victor  Hugo,  at  the  request  of  several  of  his 
friends,  made  up  from  his  romance  "Notre 
Dame  de  Paris"  the  libretto  of  an  opera 
called  "La  Esmeralda,"  of  which  the  music, 
composed  by  Mile.  Berlin,  the  daughter  of 
the  editor  of  the  Journal  de»  Debate,  was 
hissed  on  its  performance  at  the  Royal  Acad- 
emy on  the  14th  of  November,  1836. 

The  libretto,  which  was  full  of  poetry,  life, 
and  passion,  ended  with  the  word  "fatality." 


Madame  Victor  Hugo  has  pointed  out 
that,  curiously  enough,  the  first  crushing 
failure  was  not  the  only  fatality  attending  a 
work  of  which  M.  Nourrit  and  Mile.  Falcon 
were  the  executants,  a  lady  of  recognized 
talent  the  composer,  Victor  Hugo  the  libret- 
tist, and  "Notre  Dame  de  Paris"  the  sub- 
ject. The  fatality  seemed  to  pursue  the 
very  actors :  Mile.  Falcon  lost  her  voice ;  M. 
Nourrit  shortly  afterwards  committed  sui- 
cide in  Italy.  About  the  same  time,  too,  a 
vessel  called  the  "Esmeralda,"  on  her  pas- 
sage from  England  to  Ireland,  foundered 
with  all  her  crew;  and  a  valuable  mare  with 
the  same  ill-starred  name,  belonging  to  the 
Due  d'Orleans,  ran  foul  of  a  horse  in  a 
steeple-chase  and  sustained  a  fracture  of  the 
skull. 

As  nearly  as  possible  two  years  had  elapsed 
when,  on  the  8th  of  November,  1838,  Victor 
Hugo  brought  out  "Ruy  Bias"  at  the  Re- 
naissance, a  theatre  that  had  been  built  by 
royal  permission  for  the  special  benefit  of 
the  romantic  school.  The  drama,  which  was 
in  verse  and  in  five  acts,  had  been  written 
during  the  previous  July  and  the  early  part 
of  August;  its  moral  contemplates  the  yearn- 
ing of  the  population  for  higher  things;  its 
human  subject  is  the  passion  of  a  man  for  a 
woman ;  its  dramatic  point  the  love  of  a 
lackey  for  a  queen. 

This  play  (to  which,  with  others  that  were 
afterwards  produced  with  better  success,  we 
shall  have  to  refer  again)  was  at  first  the 
subject  of  as  much  contention  as  any  that 
preceded  it.  Notwithstanding  that  Frede- 
ric Lemaltre  devoted  his  best  powers  to  the 
part  of  Ruy  Bias,  the  valet  and  minister  be- 
loved of  the  queen,  the  piece  was  performed 
scarcely  more  than  fifty  times,  being  persist- 
ently hissed  on  every  occasion. 

M.  Auguste  Vacquerie  travelled  between 
200  and  300  miles  in  order  to  be  present  at 
the  first  performance.  He  had  known  Vic- 
tor Hugo  for  some  time,  and,  like  Paul 
Meurice  and  Paul  Foucher,  he  remained 
among  the  number  of  his  intimate  and  most 
devoted  friends;  but,  at  that  time,  the  devo- 
tion and  admiration  of  men  of  letters  seemed 
utterly  unable  to  prevail  against  the  corrupt 
taste  of  the  multitude.  Years  had  yet  to 
elapse  before  the  poet's  immortal  works  were 
appreciated  according  to  their  merits,  and 
assigned  the  glory  they  can  never  lose.  The 
struggle  was  long  and  fierce,  but  the  deci- 
sive victory  that  he  ultimately  achieved  has 
long  consoled  him  for  the  injustice  that  he 


118 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


suffered  at  the  hands  of  the  contemporaries 
of  his  youth. 

Not  until  1843  did  any  fresh  work  appear 
on  the  stage  from  Victor  Hugo's  pen;  but  on 
the  8th  of  March  in  that  year  "Lcs  Bur- 
graves  "  was  produced  at  the  Comedie  Fran- 
caise,  being  the  last  of  his  dramas  that  he  al- 
lowed to  be  performed.  The  splendid  trilo- 
gy, in  respect  of  which  the  poet  might  fitly 
be  compared  to  JEschylus,  was  destined  to 
be  unappreciated  throughout.  ^Eschylus, 
the  first  of  Greek  tragedians,  after  he  had 
long  stirred  the  emotions  of  the  Athenians, 
was  finally  deserted  by  them;  they  preferred 
Sophocles  to  him;  and,  full  of  dejection,  he 
went  into  exile,  saying,  "I  dedicate  my 
works  to  Time."  And  Time  at  last  did  him 
ample  justice,  though  he  did  not  live  to  en- 
joy his  triumph. 

Like  ^Eschylus,  Victor  Hugo  had  now  to 
find  out  that  the  people  of  Paris  had  discov- 
ered a  Sophocles  for  themselves  in  the  per- 
son of  Ponsard,  who  proved  to  be  a  poet  of 
very  mediocre  talents.  His  "  Lucrece  "  was 
being  played  at  this  date,  and  a  certain  clique 
were  lauding  its  success,  in  order  to  insure 
the  failure  of  "  Les  Burgraves." 

After  the  performance  of  "Lucrece,"  Jules 
Janin  had  introduced  Ponsard  to  Lamartine, 
who  received  the  new-comer  very  kindly. 
De  Lacretelle  thus  writes  upon  the  subject : 

"It  was  quite  an  event.  Hugo,  Lamar- 
tine, Vigny,  and  Sainte-Beuve  had  long  been 
recognized  as  the  leaders  of  the  romantic 
party,  to,  which  we  youngsters  were  all  at- 
tached. Our  instincts  had  drawn  us  on  tow- 
ards the  beautiful,  and  we  had  become  the 
slaves  of  Shakespeare,  whose  power  was  re- 
vealed to  us  in  the  brilliancies  of  '  Hernani,' 
'Marion  Delorme,'  'Le  Roi  s'Amuse,'  and 
'Ruy  Bias.'  Now  the  classic  party,  having 
discovered  some  beauties  in  '  Lucrece, '  were 
making  an  effort  to  avenge  their  dethrone- 
ment by  exaggerating  these  beauties,  and,  as 
a  consequence,  by  trying  to  elevate  Ponsard 
in  opposition  to  Hugo;  to  keep  to  a  consti- 
tutional monarch,  instead  of  acknowledging 
a  Charlemagne.  Our  own  love  of  liberty 
was  expressed  in  our  romantic  creed.  We 
were  indignant  with  Lamartine  for  patroniz- 
ing Ponsard,  and  we  were  sorely  tempted  to 
bring  against  him  the  overt  charge  of  desert- 
ing our  cause.  Happy  times!  in  which  the 
only  civil  war  that  raged  was  between  the 
party  which  observed  the  three  unities,  and 
that  which  set  them  at  defiance.  But  such 
were  Lamartine's  estimable  qualities  as  a 


man,  and  his  genius  as  a  poet,  that  we  soon 
got  over  our  annoyance,  and  gradually  for- 
gave him  for  regarding  Ponsard  with  fa 
vor."* 

This  confession  on  the  part  of  one  of  La- 
martine's  most  devoted  admirers  gives  a 
very  good  idea  of  the  state  of  public  feeling 
at  the  time  of  the  representation  of  "Les 
Burgraves."  The  classics  lifted  up  their 
heads  again  at  the  appearance  of  Ponsard, 
and  it  is  impossible  to  withhold  an  expres- 
sion of  regret  that  Lamartine's  name  should 
be  associated  with  their  efforts  at  revival. 

Considerably  disturbed  at  the  resuscitated 
vitality  of  their  classic  rivals,  Auguste  Vac- 
querie  and  Paul  Meurice  set  themselves  to 
work  to  reorganize  the  youthful  alliance  of 
1830,  going  for  that  purpose  to  Celestin  Nan- 
teuil,  and  asking  him  for  "three  hundred 
Spartans  ready  to  conquer  or  die  in  defend- 
ing their  Thermopylae  against  the  hordes  of 
the  barbarians." 

Nanteuil,  who  had  been  a  bold  champion 
in  all  the  battles  that  had  been  fought,  shook 
his  long  hair  and  sighed.  Turning  to  Vac- 
querie,  he  said, 

"Go,  tell  your  master  that  there  are  no 
young  men  now;  to  enroll  three  hundred 
would.be  utterly  impossible!" 

He  was  right;  the  rising  generation  had 
ceased  to  be  enamoured  of  poetry;  they  had 
begun  to  think  about  getting  rich,  rapidly 
becoming  ' '  embourgeoises. " 

Although  the  talent  of  the  author  may  be 
said  to  have  reached  its  apogee  in  this  work, 
which  may  be  declared  to  be  Titanic  in  its 
power,  yet  the  representation  of  "Les  Bur- 
graves  "  was  not  allowed  to  proceed  without 
perpetual  excitement ;  jeers  and  hisses  never 
ceased  to  mingle  with  the  applause.  The 
piece  was  only  performed  thirty  times. 

Very  sharp  were  the  criticisms  both  in  the 
Revue  des  Deux  Mondes  and  the  Gazette  de 
France,  neither  of  which  could  forgive  M. 
Hugo  for  putting  forward  independent  views 
in  politics.  Only  two  journals  spoke  favor- 
ably of  the  work — the  Message)',  in  which  M. 
fedouard  Thierry  maintained  that  the  poet 
was  being  driven  from  the  stage,  just  as  men 
of  mark  were  ostracized  by  the  Athenians 
when  they  were  weary  of  them;  and  the 
Presse,  in  which  Theophile  Gautier  wrote  to 
this  effect: 

"  What  marvellous  ability  it  has  demanded 
thus  to  revive  an  epoch  that  had  faded  in  the 

*  Henri  de  Lacretelle's  "  Lamartine  et  ses  Ami?." 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


119 


obscurity  of  the  past !  What  a  gigantic  effort, 
nerved  with  the  vigor  of  an  architect  of  the 
Middle  Ages,  it  has  taken  to  build  up  the  im- 
pregnable fortress,  with  its  walls  traversed 
by  gloomy  galleries,  its  vaults  thrilling  in 
their  mystery,  its  ancient  family  portraits, 
and  its  suits  of  armor  that  murmur  still  so 
strangely,  as  if  they  continued  to  be  haunted 
by  the  forms  that  wore  them!  What  won- 
drous power  of  imagination  was  necessary  to 
blend  the  legendary  phantoms  with  living 
persons,  and  to  supply  appropriate  discourse 
to  imperial  lips!  In  our  day  there  is  no  one 
except  M.  Hugo  who  is  capable  of  giving  the 
epic  tone  to  three  great  acts,  or  of  maintain- 
ing their  lyric  swing.  .  .  .  Every  moment 
seems  to  produce  a  magnificent  verse  that  re- 
sounds like  the  stroke  of  an  eagle's  wing,  and 
exalts  us  to  the  supremest  height  of  lyric  po- 
etry. The  play  is  diversified  in  tone,  and 
displays  a  singular  flexibility  of  rhythm,  mak- 
ing its  transitions  from  the  tender  to  the  ter- 
rible, from  the  smile  to  the  tear,  with  a  happy 
facility  that  no  other  author  has  attained. " 

This  judgment  has  now  become  the  uni- 
versal judgment  of  posterity,  but  at  that  time 
the  storm  of  contention  was  so  violent  that 
Victor  Hugo  felt  it  useless  to  contend  against 
it,  and  resolved  that  he  would  bring  out  no 
more  dramas  on  the  stage.  He  has  kept 
steadfastly  to  his  resolution,  and  none  of  his 
then  unpublished  works  have  since  been  per- 
formed ;  and  when  it  is  submitted  to  him  that 
there  is  no  fear  left  of  any  hisses  being  heard 
now,  and  that  he  ought  not  to  deprive  the 
world  of  any  of  the  productions  of  his  genius, 
his  answer  is  invariably  the  same.  He  says, 

"My  decision  is  final.  Under  no  pretext 
shall  any  more  of  my  plays  appear  on  the 
stage  during  my  life. " 

The  pieces  of  which  we  speak  are  locked 
away  with  some  other  manuscripts  in  an  iron 
chest,  and  only  a  few  favored  friends  haVe 
had  the  privilege  of  hearing  them  read  by  the 
master  in  his  own  rare  and  perfect  manner. 
They  are  called  ' '  Torquemada, "  "  La  Grand'- 
mSre,"  "L'Epee,"  and  "Peut-Stre  Frere  de 
Garoche;"  and  there  is  likewise  a  pantomime, 
' '  La  Forest  Mouillee, "  in  which  trees  and  flow- 
ers are  made  to  talk. 

Having  indicated  the  philosophical  range 
of  Victor  Hugo's  dramatic  writings,  it  yet  re- 
mains for  us  to  point  out  how  they  brought 
about,  to  a  certain  extent,  the  revival  of  the 
representation  of  love  upon  the  stage. 

Charles  Nodier,  in  epitomizing  the  literary 
history  of  the  classic  period  previous  to  1830, 


has  remarked  that  love  had  come  to  play  a 
most  unimportant  part,  and  that  since  Mal- 
herbe,  "whose  appearance  might  very  well 
have  been  dispensed  with, "  the  classical  school 
had  exhibited  a  positive  antipathy  to  that 
sentiment;  and  in  his  own  discriminating  way 
this  able  critic  goes  on  to  observe  that  except 
in  a  few  scenes  by  Moliere,  a  small  number 
of  effusions  by  La  Fontaine,  some  outbursts 
of  Phedre  and  of  Ariadne,  and  some  tears  of 
Andromache,  some  fine  passages  in  the ' '  Cid, " 
and  a  magnificent  hemistich  by  Sertorius,  the 
classics  had  made  it  clear  that  they  under- 
stood no  more  of  love  than  of  liberty. 

And  in  his  own  brilliant  style  Nodier  ex- 
presses his  indignation  that  a  literature  based 
upon  the  poetry  of  love  should  no  longer  be 
understood  by  its  natural  interpreters;  and 
he  inquires,  with  considerable  warmth,  how 
it  had  happened  that  metaphysics,  affected 
rather  than  subtle,  had  been  introduced  by 
people  of  culture  into  the  affairs  of  the  heart, 
and  why  sentiment  had  grown  as  pedantic  as 
the  philosophy  of  the  Encyclopaedists,  and 
whence  had  come  the  voluptuousness  as  foul 
and  brutal  as  the  spinthrees  of  the  Parc-aux- 
Cerfs.  Convinced  in  his  own  mind  that  love 
had  no  longer  any  part  in  the  literary  pro- 
ductions of  the  present  century,  just  as  it  had 
no  part  in  the  marriages  of  the  middle  classes, 
he  went  on  to  affirm  that  it  had  taken  refuge 
among  "the  people"  —  that  asylum  for  all 
elevated  human  thought  that  society  rejects, 
because  it  is  among  the  people  that  all  the 
elements  of  civilization  are  preserved,  devel- 
oped, and  reanimated,  even  as  it  is  in  the 
earth  that  the  germs  are  concealed  which  re- 
new the  blossoms  of  the  spring. 

With  Romanticism,  and  with  Victor  Hugo 
as  its  representative,  love  found  its  regenera- 
tion. Its  heroes  were  taken  from  the  people, 
and  inspired  with  the  passions  of  the  people; 
they  were  the  "Hernani,"  the  "Marion  De- 
lorme,"  and  the  "Ruy  Bias"  of  the  stage. 
These  are  characters  that  live  and  weep  and 
suffer  with  a  common  humanity ;  as  such  they 
have  become  types — that  is  to  say,  they  are  the 
embodiment  of  a  truth,  the  expression  of  an 
idea,  and  at  the  same  time  the  sign  of  a  creation. 

Now  creation,  or  invention,  is  the  stamp  of 
genius.  The  commonplace  artist  simply  cop- 
ies; the  true  artist  gives  animation  to  an  in- 
dividual being  by  making  it  the  representa- 
tive of  an  entire  group.  The  classics  were 
reproducing  the  types  of  antiquity,  copying 
their  models  with  unvarying  precision ;  there 
was  to  them  only  the  one  ideal  of  beauty  in 


120 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  UIS  TIME. 


literature  as  in  painting;  and,  consecrated  as 
that  was  by  the  admiration  of  ages,  they  did 
not  venture  to  acknowledge  any  other.  Why 
should  they  desist,  they  asked,  from  admiring 
what  the  world  had  never  ceased  to  admire 
before? 

Thus  the  road  to  success  was  to  be  subser- 
vient to  the  established  taste,  and  to  run 
along  the  common  groove.  To  deviate  from 
the  accustomed  path  was  only  to  court  insult 
and  derision. 

But  the  romantics  had  the  audacity  to 
brave  that  derision.  They  saw  that  the  time 
was  come  for  producing  something  new,  even 
at  the  risk  of  rendering  themselves  liable  to 
indecorous  violation  of  custom;  they  were 
persuaded  that  the  national  genius  should  no 
longer  be  denied  the  exercise  of  that  faculty 
of  invention  in  which  it  was  so  especially 
strong,  declaring  that  liberty  should  not  be  to 
them  a  mere  empty  sound,  however  much  it 
had  been  disputed  hitherto  —  sometimes  in 
the  name  of  Aristotle  and  the  Greeks,  some- 
times in  the  name  of  the  Sorbonne,  the  Uni- 
versity, or  the  Academy,  and  sometimes  in  the 
name  of  Liberty  herself.  It  is  for  Victor 
Hugo  that  Charles  Nodier  goes  on  to  claim 
the  honor  of  being,  after  Rabelais  and  Mo- 
liere,  one  of  the  most  original  geniuses  that 
French  literature  ever  saw;  but  his  talent 
was  of  the  very  kind  that  explains  the  aver- 
sion with  which  he  was  regarded  by  the  in- 
capables  who,  by  their  intrigues,  contrived  to 
hold  their  own,  and  to  prevent  his  produc- 
tions from  being  performed  on  the  stage. 

Political  chicanery  had  much  to  do  with 
the  literary  persecution;  and  in  reference  to 
this  Victor  Hugo  remarks  how  strange  it  was 
that  the  prejudices,  feuds,  and  plots  that  he 
had  to  encounter  should  have  such  solidity 
that  they  could  be  piled  up  into  a  barricade 
that  should  effectually  close  the  door  of  a 
theatre. 

It  was  a  barricade,  however,  upon  the  dem- 
olition of  which  Victor  Hugo  was  determined. 
It  remained  undisturbed  through  the  earlier 
years  of  Louis  Philippe's  reign;  but  in  1837 
the  poet  commenced  another  suit  before  the 
Board  of  Trade  to  compel  the  Comedie  Fran- 
caise to  complete  their  engagements  with  him 
by  performing  his  plays,  and  to  compensate 
him  for  the  long  delay  in  producing  them. 

M.   Paillard   de   Villeneuve   was   Victor 


Hugo's  counsel,  and  acquitted  himself  well. 
He  pointed  out  the  injustice  of  a  theatre  sup- 
ported by  the  State  becoming  the  monopoly 
of  a  clique;  he  detailed  all  the  particulars  of 
the  covenant  which  had  been  made  between 
the  Comedie  Francaise  and  the  plaintiff;  he 
denounced  the  party-spirit  that  had  threat- 
ened to  withdraw  the  State  grant  if  the  "in- 
novators "  were  allowed  to  have  their  way ; 
and  he  concluded  by  asserting  that  no  pieces 
had  ever  realized  greater  profits,  and  that 
even  now,  while  they  were  prohibited  in 
France,  they  were  drawing  large  and  appre- 
ciative audiences  in  London,  in  Vienna,  in 
Madrid,  in  Valladolid,  in  Moscow — in  short, 
everywhere  except  in  Paris. 

Following  his  counsel,  Victor  Hugo  rose 
and  made  a  few  extempore  remarks,  to  show 
how  the  manager  of  the  Theatre  Francais 
had  applied  for  his  pieces,  but  now  had  al- 
lowed it  to  be  seen  that  he  had  two  faces,  or 
rather  two  masks — one  of  which  he  wore  to 
deceive  authors,  and  the  other  to  delude  jus- 
tice. 

Judgment  was  given  in  his  favor.  The 
Board  sentenced  the  Comedie  Francaise  to 
pay  6000  francs  as  damages,  and  bound  the 
company  over  to  perform  "Hernani,"  "Ma- 
rion Delorme,"  and  "Angelo"  without  fur- 
ther delay. 

Against  this  judgment  an  appeal  was  lodged 
before  the  Royal  Court  in  December;  and 
when  the  matter  came  on  for  trial,  Victor 
Hugo  pleaded  in  person,  and  represented  that 
a  small  clique,  in  ambush  behind  the  Minis- 
ter of  the  Interior,  was  putting  forth  its  en- 
ergies to  keep  the  stage  closed  against  a  new 
and  rising  school  of  literature,  simply  for  no 
other  reason  except  that  the  new  school  en- 
tertained ideas  that  were  not  in  accordance 
with  their  own. 

Amid  a  general  expression  of  approval,  the 
court  upheld  the  previous  judgment,  dismiss- 
ing the  appeal.  In  this  way  justice  at  last 
asserted  her  right  in  opposition  to  the  minis 
terial  clique. 

"Hernani"  was  the  first  of  the  disputed 
pieces  to  be  reproduced.  It  was  universally 
applauded;  and,  in  order  to  account  for  the 
favor  with  which  it  was  received,  a  classic 
critic  issued  a  review  to  the  effect  that  Victor 
Hugo,  the  author,  had  altered  nearly  every 
line! 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


121 


CHAPTER   XVI. 

'Les  Orieutales."  —  A  Portrait  of  Victor  Hugo.  — Kespect  Inspired  by  the  Past.  — Changes  of  Residence.— 
The  House  in  the  Rue  Jean-Gonjou — An  Attempt  at  Murder. — The  ftevue  dea  Deux  Mondes. — M.  Buloz. — 
M.  Xavier  Murmier — Domestic  Life.  —  "Les  Feuilles  d'Automiie." —  Manuscripts.  —  " Les  Chants  du 
Cre"puscule." — "Les  Voix  Iiite'rieures. — "Les  Rayons  et  les  Otubi-es." 


THUS  did  Victor  Hugo  achieve  the  triumph 
of  liberty  for  literature;  hereafter  he  would 
become  the  champion  of  liberty  in  politics. 
All  that  he  did  and  all  that  he  spoke  had  but 
one  single  aim — the  emancipation  of  the  hu- 
man race. 

With  the  object  of  combining  into  a  con- 
tinuous narrative  the  account  of  what  Victor 
Hugo  calls  his  "attempt  at  drama,"  we  have 
collected  his  various  plays  into  a  group  by 
themselves,  but  for  this  purpose  have  been 
led  to  depart  somewhat  from  the  chronologi- 
cal order  of  his  publications.  It  will  conse- 
quently be  necessary  now  to  go  back  a  few 
years  to  take  his  lyrical  compositions  into 
review. 

"Les  Orien tales"  first  appeared  in  1829. 
These  poems,  with  their  bright  and  sparkling 
color,  mark  what  we  may  call  the  poet's  sec- 
ond lyric  etyle ;  they  are  a  series  of  Eastern 
visions,  fall  of  imagery  as  bright  as  it  is  pure. 
The  cadence  of  their  rhyme  is  full  of  harmo- 
ny, and  beneath  the  skill  of  the  artist's  hand 
the  Oriental  landscapes  spring  forth  to  life; 
while  simultaneously  the  poet  extols  the 
most  generous  sentiments,  the  love  of  inde- 
pendence and  the  spirit  of  patriotism. 

After  describing  Navarino  and  the  light- 
ning, he  passes  with  a  charming  facility  from 
the  proud  demand  of  the  Greek  child  for  am- 
munition to  the  idyllic  reveries  of  "  Sara  la 
Baigneuse;"  and,  as  a  reviewer  has  pointed 
out,  "  never  had  the  material  aspect  of  things 
been  so  vividly  depicted,  and  never  had 
French  versification  exhibited  such  pictu- 
resqueness,  grace,  and  melody." 

The  author  of  "  Les  Orientales  "  has  been 
reproved  for  drawing  an  East  that  is  entire- 
ly imaginary,  having  nothing  real  or  histori- 
cal in  its  character.  Asked  what  was  the 
good  of  the  book,  he  replied  that  he  really 
did  not  know;  he  had  only  to  say  that  the 
idea  had  entered  his  head  one  summer  even- 
ing as  he  was  watching  the  sunset  at  Vanves, 
according  to  his  wont,  and  that  he  was  not 


aware  that  there  was  any  forbidden  fruit  in 
the  garden  of  poetry. 

Criticism,  however,  did  not  prevent  the  vol- 
ume from  reaching  a  seventh  edition  in  the 
course  of  a  few  weeks :  it  was  the  first  work 
in  which  the  author  gave  free  scope  to  his 
imagination,  while  retaining  his  own  peculiar 
style.  One  reviewer  has  observed  that  the 
poetry  might  fairly  be  likened  to  the  Gothic 
architecture  of  the  fifteenth  century,  being 
ornate, fanciful,  and  florid;  and  that  its  diver- 
sity, embracing  every  form  of  conception 
from  the  love-ballad  to  the  war-song,  vindi- 
cates the  claim  for  the  author  that  he  had 
never  been  surpassed  in  flexibility  and  fertil- 
ity of  thought. 

The  appearance  of  the  book  redoubled  the 
admiration  felt  for  Victor  Hugo  by  his  disci- 
ples; and  in  the  following  year  Theophile 
Gautier,  the  most  enthusiastic  of  them  all, 
begged  for  an  introduction  to  the  "grand 
chef."  His  account  of  the  interview,  which 
he  has  written  in  his  own  fashion,  is  worth 
recording,  as  giving  a  characteristic  portrait 
of  the  poefr  at  this  period.  He  writes,  in  his 
"Notices  Romantiques :" 

"After  all  our  battles  in  his  behalf,  we  felt 
that  such  an  introduction  was  little  short  of 
our  right,  and  it  could  readily  be  accomplish- 
ed, as  either  Gerard  de  Nerval  or  Petrus  Bo- 
rel  would  take  us  to  the  house.  But,  to  say 
the  truth,  we  were  overpowered  with  shy- 
ness at  the  thought  of  our  wish  being  act- 
ually fulfilled,  so  that  it  was  a  sort  of  re- 
lief to  find,  from  time  to  time,  that  some- 
thing had  occurred  to  prevent  our  keeping 
the  appointment  with  Gerard  or  Petrus. 
The  very  delay  enabled  us  to  breathe  more 
freely. 

"Twice  did  we  mount  his  staircase,  our 
feet  dragging  as  if  they  were  shod  with  lead ; 
in  our  excitement,  the  sweat  stood  upon  our 
brow;  we  laid  our  hand  upon  the  knocker 
and  our  terror  became  too  much  for  us ;  we 
turned,  and,  taking  four  stairs  at  a  time. 


122 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


made  a  hurried  retreat,  our  friends  mean- 
\\liilr  standing  and  laughing  at  our  alarm. 

"But  the  third  attempt  proved  more  suc- 
cessful. Having  gained  a  few  moments' 
grace  for  our  legs  to  recover  from  their  totter- 
ing, we  took  a  seat  on  the  stairs,  when  sud- 
denly the  door  was  open,  and  lo!  himself  the 


I  en  sceptre  for  our  encouragement.  But  he 
was  too  much  accustomed  to  see  small  poets 
in  a  state  of  swoon  to  exhibit  any  astonish- 
ment. He  courteously  raised  us  from  our 
seat,  and,  observing  that  he  would  give  up 
the  walk  on  which  he  was  about  to  start,  he 
led  the  way  into  his  study. 


SABA   LA   BAIGXEIT8E  ("  LES  ORIENTALES "). 


centre  of  a  flood  of  light,  like  Phoebus  Apol- 
lo in  his  glory,  there  stood  Victor  Hugo! 

"  Like  Esther  before  Ahasuerus,  we  were 
ready  to  faint ;  it  was  almost  a  matter  of  sur- 
prise that  the  monarch  did  not,  like  the  sa- 
trap to  the  beautiful  Jewess,  extend  his  gold- 


"  Heine  has  related  how,  when  he  was  go- 
ing to  have  an  interview  with  Goethe,  he 
prepared  an  elaborate  speech  beforehand, 
but  when  he  found  himself  in  the  great 
man's  presence  he  could  think  of  nothing 
better  to  say  than  that  the  plum-trees  on  the 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


123 


road  between  Jena  and  Weimar  bore  plums 
that  were  very  nice  when  one  was  thirsty; 
whereupon  the  Jupiter  Mansuetus  of  Ger- 
man poetry  smiled  gently,  perhaps  more  flat- 
tered by  his  visitor's  bewilderment  than  he 
would  have  been  by  the  most  finished  ha- 
rangue and  by  the  most  glowing  eulogium. 
Just  so  was  it  with  us !  Our  eloquence  was 
mute:  the  long  apostrophe  of  praise  which 
we  had  spent  whole  evenings  in  composing 
all  came  to  nought ! 


ment.rose  above  his  calm  and  earnest  counte- 
nance :  the  beauty  of  that  forehead  was  well- 
I  nigh  superhuman;  the  deepest  of  thoughts 
|  might  be  written  within,  but  it  was  capable 
of  bearing  the  coronet  of  gold  or  the  chaplet 
of  laurel  with  all  the  dignity  of  a  divinity  or 
a  Caesar.  This  splendid  brow  was  set  in  a 
frame  of  rich  chestnut  hair  that  was  allowed 
to  grow  to  considerable  length  behind.  His 
face  was  closely  shaven,  its  peculiar  paleness 
being  relieved  by  the  lustre  of  a  pair  of  hazel 


./ 


VICTOR  HUGO   AT   THE   AGE   OP   TWENTY-EIGHT. 


"Gods,  kings,  fair  women  and  poets  can 
be  stared  at  with  more  impunity  than  ordi- 
nary mortals.  Victor  Hugo  was  manifestly 
not  in  the  least  disconcerted  by  the  intense 
admiration  with  which  we  fixed  our  gaze 
upon  him. 

"He  was  then  twenty-eight  years  of  age, 
and  nothing  about  him  was  more  striking 
than  his  forehead,  that,  like  a  marble  monu- 


eyes,  keen  as  an  eagle's.  The  curved  lips 
betokened  a  firm  determination,  and,  when 
half  opened  in  a  smile,  displayed  a  set  of 
teeth  of  charming  whiteness.  His  attire  was 
neat  and  faultless,  consisting  of  black  frock- 
coat,  gray  trousers,  and  a  small  lay -down 
collar.  Nothing  in  his  appearance  could 
ever  have  led  any  one  to  suspect  that  this 
perfect  gentleman  was  the  leader  of  the 


124 


VICTOR  JJUOO  AND  1118   TIM  I-:. 


rough-bearded,  dishevelled  set  that  was  the 
terror  of  the  smooth-faced  boury«»'*i' . 

"  Such  was  Victor  Hugo.  His  image  as 
we  saw  it  in  that  first  interview  has  never 
faded  from  our  memory.  It  is  a  portrait 
that  we  cherish  tenderly;  its  smiles,  beaming 
with  talent,  continue  with  us,  ever  diffusing 
a  clear  and  phosphorescent  glory !" 

Enthusiastic  as  this  outburst  is,  it  bears  its 
own  special  testimony  to  the  respect  tliat 
Victor  Hugo  had  gained  at  an  age  when 
poets  are  ordinarily  only  just  emerging  into 
fame.  Already  he  had  inspired  men  scarce- 
ly younger  than  himself  with  a  veneration 
that  did  not  arise  solely  from  the  works 
that  he  had  published,  but  was  to  be  attrib- 
uted in  a  measure  to  the  dignity  of  his  private 
life  and  the  worth  of  his  moral  character. 
Although  a  member  of  the  Cenacle,  and  liv- 
ing in  close  intimacy  with  his  literary  con- 
temporaries, he  never  lost  his  courteous  re- 
serve and  gentle  gravity;  he  was  kind  yet 
serious,  cheerful  yet  not  familiar,  many  of 
his  most  fervent  supporters  never  knew  him 
intimately,  and  only  a  few  of  his  associates 
ever  ventured  to  say  to  him  "thee"  or 
"thou."  He  has  been  insulted  and  slander- 
ed, but  never  treated  with  contempt;  and  we 
shall  subsequently  have  occasion  to  notice 
the  personal  influence  he  exercised  upon  all 
who  were  brought  into  contact  with  him. 

Since  1828,  when  he  had  left  the  Rue  de 
Vaugirard  to  take  up  his  abode  at  11  Rue 
Notre  Dame  des  Champs,  all  the  men  of  let- 
ters who  visited  him  had  come  to  regard  him 
as  their  master.  Among  those  who  called 
upon  him  most  frequently  was  Louis  Bou- 
langer;  another  constant  visitor  was  Sainte- 
Beuve,  who  owned  that  Victor  Hugo  had 
taught  him  a  method  in  the  art  of  poetry, 
instructing  him  both  in  style  and  versifica- 
tion. He  never  hesitated  to  declare  that  the 
great  leader  of  Romanticism  had  captivated 
him  from  the  first  day  he  saw  him. 

Every  evening  in  Victor  Hugo's  house  was 
at  this  period  devoted  to  readings,  to  which 
both  his  daughter  Leopoldine  and  his  little 
son  Charles,  a  chubby  boy  nicknamed  Char- 
lot,  were  invited  to  listen,  while  Victor,  the 
baby,  slumbered  in  his  cradle ;  the  family  par- 
ty being  frequently  increased  by  Alfred  de 
Musset,  Emile  Deschamps,  Gustave  Planche, 
Merimee,  Beranger,  and  Paul  Foucher,  who, 
himself  a  noble  -  hearted  and  imaginative 
writer,  never  ceased  to  regard  his  distin- 
guished brother-in-law  with  loving  admira- 
tion. 


The  house  in  the  Rue  Notre  Dame  des 
Champs,  in  which  so  many  fine  verses  wen- 
composed,  is  now  destroyed;  it  had  a  garden 
on  one  side  and  a  court-yard  on  the  other: 
the  landlady  occupied  the  ground-floor,  the 
poet  had  the  floor  above.  The  court-yard 
was  approached  by  an  avenue  of  trees  shut 
in  by  a  wall.  The  residence  suited  Madame 
Victor  Hugo  well  enough,  but  her  stay  in  it 
was  brought  to  rather  a  sudden  end;  for,  af- 
ter the  performance  of  "  Hernani,"  the  apart- 
ments of  the  author  were  besieged  by  such 
an  influx  of  visitors,  especially  late  at  night, 
that  the  landlady  declared  she  could  not  have 
her  rest  disturbed  in  that  way,  and  accord- 
ingly gave  her  tenants  notice  to  quit.  They 
moved  to  the  Rue  Jean-Goujon,  a  street  then 
being  formed  in  the  Quartier  Francois  I.  At 
that  time  the  house  they  occupied  was  the 
only  one  finished ;  it  was  afterwards  distin- 
guished as  No.  9;  all  around  it  were  gardens 
and  the  Champs  Elysees,  then  in  a  very  des- 
olate condition,  but  affording  sufficient  soli- 
tude to  enable  Victor  Hugo,  according  to  his 
habit,  to  compose  as  he  walked.  The  un- 
finished thoroughfare  was  remarkable  for  a 
great  bowling-alley,  enclosed  by  a  hoarding, 
which  was  a  favorite  Sunday  resort  for  the 
bourgeois. 

The  change  of  residence  did  not  bring  any 
immediate  comfort.  Just  at  that  period  the 
Revolution  of  1830  broke  out,  fighting  went  on 
in  the  Champs  Elysees,  and  bullets  perpetual- 
ly whistled  round  the  solitary  house  in  the  Rue 
Jean-Goujon,  so  that  it  was  considered  de- 
sirable to  send  the  most  valuable  part  of  the 
property  away  to  the  Rue  du  Cherche-Midi. 
It  was  not  long,  however,  before  peace  was 
restored. 

It  was  Victor  Hugo's  habit  to  go  out  after 
dark  and  wander  about  for  hours  composing 
either  some  verses,  a  scene  of  a  play,  or  a 
chapter  of  a  romance,  which  he  would  com- 
mit to  paper  on  his  return, and,  notwithstand- 
ing the  various  dangers  that  threatened  him, 
he  persisted  in  always  going  alone.  The 
fury  that  "Hernani"  excited  was  quite 
alarming.  One  dramatic  author,  whose  name, 
in  spite  of  his  marvellous  memory,  Victor 
Hugo  has  quite  forgotten,  sent  him  a  chal- 
lenge; and  the  poet  received  many  letters 
that  were  not  only  insulting,  but  menacing. 
Madame  Victor  Hugo  has  mentioned  one  of 
them  which  ran  to  this  effect:  "If  you  do 
not  withdraw  your  vile  play,  you  shall  soon 
be  sent  beyond  the  taste  of  bread." 

Victor  Hugo  only  smiled  at  all  this;  but. 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


125 


one  night,  after  returning  from  a  stroll  in 
which  he  had  composed  a  page  of  the 
"Feuilles  d'Automne,"  he  lighted  his  lamp, 
and  was  writing  at  about  two  o'clock  in  the 
morning,  when  he  heard  a  loud  report,  and 
immediately  felt  the  window-pane  at  his  side 
shivered  to  atoms.  In  vain  he  looked  down 
into  the  street;  not  a  soul  was  visible;  but 
on  examining  the  room  he  discovered  that 
a  bullet  had  passed  only  a  few  inches  above 
his  head,  making  a  hole  right  through  a 
picture  of  Boulanger's  that  was  hanging  on 
the  opposite  wall.  He  put  out  his  lamp  and 
went  to  bed ;  but  he  made  no  report  of  what 
had  happened,  and  took  no  measures  to  as- 
certain who  was  the  would-be  assassin. 

In  the  house  in  the  Rue  Jean-Goujon,  the 
ground-floor  was  occupied  by  the  owner;  the 
floor  above  had  been  taken  by  Victor  Hugo ; 
over  him  were  two  more  stories,  in  one  of 
which  resided  General  Vicomte  de  Cavai- 
gnac,  the  uncle  of  Godefroy  and  Eugene  Ca- 
vaignac,  and  whose  son  was  afterwards  made 
a  French  peer ;  the  uppermost  floor  of  all 
being  the  lodging  of  Baron  de  Mortemart  de 
Boisse,  of  whom  F^mile  Deschamps,who  ever 
loved  his  joke, used  to  say  that  he  was  neither 
"baron  nor  mort,  nor  de  Boisse,  but  simply 
emart." 

This  Mortemart  de  Boisse,  who  was  brother- 
in-law  to  the  Vicomte  de  Cavaignac.was  then 
editor  of  the  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes,  a  pe- 
riodical now  of  world- wide  celebrity,  though 
for  some  years  after  it  was  started  (in  1829)  by 
Segur-Duperron  and  Mauroy  it  was  a  pub- 
lication of  comparatively  no  importance,  and 
devoted  principally  to  geography.  The  edi- 
tor informed  Victor  Hugo  that  the  proprietors 
were  anxious  to  dispose  of  it,  and  asked  him 
whether  he  knew  of  any  one  who  was  likely 
to  be  a  purchaser.  It  happened  that  quite 
recently  M.  Buloz  had  had  a  small  legacy, 
and  he  had  confided  to  Victor  Hugo  his  de- 
sire to  start  a  journal.  To  him  the  poet  com- 
municated what  De  Cavaignac  had  men- 
tioned; the  matter  was  soon  negotiated,  and 
thus  M.  Buloz  became  the  proprietor  of  the 
review.  He  at  once  requested  Victor  Hugo 
to  be  a  contributor;  to  this  application  Vic- 
tor Hugo  replied  that  he  could  not  write  for 
him  regularly,  but  consented  to  his  publish- 
ing the  account  he  had  written  of  his  journey 
to  the  Alps  in  company  with  Nodier  and  La- 
martine. 

As  the  success  of  the  review  became  estab- 
lished, M.  Buloz  became  more  urgent  in  his 
solicitations. 


"My  subscribers,"  he  said, " are  full  of  in- 
quiries about  you,  and  when  I  tell  them  Hugo 
is  the  greatest  poet  of  the  age,  they  naturally 
say, '  Then  give  us  Hugo.'  " 

But  the  poet's  answer  never  deviated;  he 
invariably  maintained  that  he  was  not  dis- 
posed to  write  in  magazines,  till  Buloz,  irri- 
tated with  disappointment,  rejoined, 

"Be  it  so;  but  mark  you,  henceforward 
my  journal  is  not  your  journal." 

And  forthwith  the  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes 
changed  its  tone  of  admiration  into  the  most 
furious  attacks  upon  all  Victor  Hugo's  pro- 
ductions. M.  Buloz  never  forgave  him. 

Another  picture  of  the  poet  in  his  home 
has  been  sketched  by  M.  Xavier  Marmier,  a 
young  man  devoted  to  art,  and  subsequently 
a  distinguished  writer  in  the  Revue,  and  an 
Academician.  One  evening,  in  the  winter  of 
1831,  he  presented  himself  in  the  Rue  Jean- 
Goujon;  he  had  no  letter  of  introduction, 
but,  convinced  that  any  sincere  lover  of  lit- 
erature would  be  sure  of  a  welcome,  he  called 
to  submit  a  book  of  poems  to  the  poet,  and 
to  request  his  criticism  and  ad  vice,  which  he 
knew  would  be  equally  wise  and  candid. 
Ushered  into  a  large  room,  furnished  with 
simple  and  yet  elegant  taste,  he  was  struck 
by  the  womanly  beauty  of  Madame  Victor 
Hugo,  who  had  one  of  her  children  upon  her 
knee ;  and  when  he  saw  the  poet  sitting  read- 
ing close  by  at  the  fireside,  he  was  vividly 
impressed  with  the  resemblance  of  the  entire 
scene  to  one  of  Van  Dyck's  finest  pictures; 
and,  although  it  is  now  fifty  years  ago,  he 
retains  all  the  clearness  of  his  first  impres- 
sion. 

It  is  in  a  new  aspect  that  we  have  now  to 
see  the  poet. 

Family  affection  had  ever  been  a  deep  feel- 
ing of  his  heart,  but  the  "Feuilles  d'Au- 
tomne," which  next  appeared,  revealed  to 
what  extent  paternal  love  had  now  asserted 
its  hold  upon  him.  He  sings  no  longer  of 
the  woman  of  his  early  love,  but  he  dwells 
upon  the  praises  of  the  mother,  and  hence- 
forward seems  to  have  an  infinity  of  tender- 
ness to  lavish  upon  his  children,  who,  while 
they  charmed  him  by  their  sprightly  grace, 
yet  brought  him  much  anxiety  and  care. 

Justly  are  the  "Feuilles  d'Automne"  still 
esteemed  the  most  touching  of  all  his  lyrics. 
In  them  he  dwells  upon  all  his  inmost  joys, 
and,  as  M.  Alfred  Nettement  writes, 

"His  lay  is  of  what  he  has  seen,  of  what 
he  has  felt,  of  what  he  has  loved.  He  sings  of 
his  wife,  the  ornament  of  his  home ;  of  his 


126 


VICTOR  HUOO  AND   Ills    TIME. 


children,  fascinating  in  their  fair-haired  beau- 
ty ;  of  landscapes  ever  widening  in  their  ho- 
rizon; of  trees  under  which  he  has  enjoyed 
a  grateful  shade." 

Here,  in  what  perhaps  may  claim  to  be  the 
most  finished  of  all  his  works,  he  records  his 
sickly  infancy,  and  his  love  for  his  affection- 
ate mother  and  his  honored  father.  Not  only 
has  the  power  of  his  style  developed  itself 
marvellously,  but  his  ideas  have  widened  so 
as  to  embrace  a  new  and  beautiful  life.  What- 
ever sadness  and  disappointment  might  arise, 
all  seemed  to  be  cheered,  if  not  dispelled,  by 
the  unfailing  pleasures  of  family  union.  He 
takes  a  retrospect  of  the  past;  he  wonders 
how  the  happy  hours  have  sped  away  so 
rapidly,  and  exclaims: 

"  Years  of  my  fleeting  yonth !  did  I  e'er  do  you  wrong, 
That  you  so  swiftly  oil  your  transit  haste  along 

And  leave  me  to  complain  ? 
What  have  I  done?    No  more  your  smiling  joys  ye 

bring, 

No  more  ye  carry  me  enraptured  on  your  wing; 
My  heart  must  sigh  with  pain  1" 

And  then  he  asks  himself  where  suffering 
humanity  may  find  relief ;  and,  shrinking 
from  the  destiny  before  him,  utters  a  mur- 
mur of  resignation  somewhat  in  this  strain : 

"  Forget,  forget  the  past  1  and  let  th'  unresting  air 
That  wafted  once  our  yonth,  our  waning  lives  now 
bear 

Ou  to  the  mystic  shore. 

Nought  of  ourselves  is  constant ;  perishable  all ; 
The  very  shadows  that  we  cast  upon  the  wall, 
Seen  henceforth  never  more  1" 

But  this  philosophy,  sombre  as  it  is,  is,  af- 
ter all,  no  cry  of  desperation.  Though  the 
poet,  himself  a  type  of  humanity,  may  groan 
and  travail,  his  tears  are  all  stayed  by  the 
thought  of  the  smiles  of  those  he  loves. 

Sainte-Beuve,  who  subsequently  became  a 
freethinker,  reproached  the  author  because 
in  his  book  he  had  forgotten  God,  and  Planche 
reviewed  it  with  his  wonted  spitefulness;  it 
was,  moreover,  published  just  at  the  crisis  of 
a  revolution,  but  neither  political  agitation, se- 
vere criticism,  nor  theological  reproof  availed 
to  diminish  its  circulation.  It  was  soon  in 
the  hands  of  every  one.  The  verse  captivated 
alike  by  its  rhythm  and  its  genius,  and  was 
felt  to  have  the  highest  of  all  charms — that 
it  appealed  to  all,  and  could  be  understood 
by  all. 

Happy  in  what  he  had  accomplished,  Vic- 
tor Hugo  did  not  rest  from  his  labors;  but 
though  he  was  giving  new  life  to  the  stage 
by  his  dramas,  and  creating  romances  stirring 
in  their  novel  interest,  he  continued  to  work 


as  a  poet,  and  in  1835  produced  "  Les  Chants 
du  Crepuscule." 

Such  was  the  title  that  the  poet  elected  to 
prefix  to  his  new  volume,  as  indicating  the 
general  gloom  of  twilight  and  uncertainty 
that  seemed  to  be  settling  upon  society  and 
the  world  in  general.  It  was  almost  as  if  a 
note  of  interrogation  were  appended  to  every 
thought  as  it  arose  in  the  mind.  As  com- 
pared with  what  had  gone  before,  the  book 
exhibits  the  same  ideas;  the  poet  is  identical- 
ly the  same  poet,  but  his  brow  is  furrowed  by 
deeper  lines,  and  maturity  is  more  stamped 
upon  his  years;  he  laments  that  he  cannot 
comprehend  the  semi-darkness  that  is  gather- 
ing around ;  his  hope  seems  damped  by  hesi- 
tation; his  love-songs  die  away  hi  sighs  of 
misgiving  ;  and  when  he  sees  the  people  en- 
veloped in  doubt,  he  begins  to  be  conscious 
of  faltering  too.  But  from  all  his  temper  of 
despondency  he  quickly  rallies,  and  returns 
to  a  bright  assurance  of  a  grand  development 
of  the  human  race. 

Meanwhile,  over  this  uncertainty,  political 
and  social,  he  breathes  out  his  poetic  soul ; 
midway  between  what  is  positive  and  nega- 
tive,he  will  not  despair, but  ventures  to  hope. 
He  discerns  the  sound  of  the  waves  of  human 
life  as  they  roll  along,  sometimes  placid  and 
sometimes  angry,  just  as  the  sea-breeze  will 
carry  across  the  summit  of  the  cliff  the  mur- 
mur of  the  rippling  water  or  the  boisterous- 
ness  of  the  raging  breaker. 

The  Revolution  of  1830  was  a  popular  move- 
ment ;  he  divines  not  what  it  would  produce ; 
he  has  a  presentiment  that  what  it  established 
would  be  void  of  advantage,  and  yet  he  knows 
not  wherewith  to  replace  it : 

"And  yet,  what  matter?  we  may  sleep  or  wake, 
The  world  around  its  destined  course  will  take, 
But  if  for  weal  or  woe  man  knoweth  not : 
The  age  approaches  its  unerring  lot ! 

"And  hark !  from  you  horizon's  farthest  bound 
There  breaketh  forth  a  vague  and  mystic  sound ; 
Upon  that  distant  margin  fix  thine  eyes, 
The  shade  shall  deepen,  or  the  star  shall  rise  ! 

"  And  anxious  thus  the  doubtful  east  to  scan, 
The  poet  hears  the  mingled  plaints  of  mau  ; 
He  hears  the  saddened  sigh  of  weary  life, 
He  murks  the  uproar  of  a  nation's  strife. 

"And  yet,  amid  the  sadness  of  his  song, 
A  gentle  echo  doth  its  note  prolong — 
Echo  of  noblest  dreamings  of  the  soul, 
That  should  each  waiting,  harassed  heart  console  !" 

Intermingled  with  such  verses  as  these  are 
songs  of  pity  and  of  indignation.  The  poet 
consigns  to  the  pillory  the  man  who  betrayed 


LE8  FEUILLE8  D'AUTOMNE." 


128 


VICTOR  I1UGO  AXD  MS   TIME. 


the  Duchesse  de  Berri,  and  he  enters  his  pro- 
te-t  airain.-t  insult-  being  heaped  upon  fallen 
woman;  he  meditates  as  he  works,  dc-irinir 
that  his  poetry  should  be  the  instructor  of 
his  own  soul,  according  to  what  he  wrote 
some  years  later. 

Alter  a  diligent  prosecution  of  his  philo- 
sophical and  social  studies, Victor  Hugo,  in 
1837,  published  a  new  volume  entitled  "  Les 
Voix  Interieures."  He  dedicated  it  to  his 
father,  as  one  whose  name  was  not  originally 
inscribed  upon  the  Arc  de  1'fetoile,  although 
the  government  ultimately  rectified  the  omis- 
sion. 

The  poet  in  this  production  regards  life 
under  its  threefold  aspect — at  home,  abroad, 
and  at  work;  he  maintains  that  it  is  the  mis- 
sion of  the  poe.t  not  to  suffer  the  past  to  be- 
come an  illusion  to  blind  him  in  the  present, 
but  to  survey  all  things  calmly,  to  be  ever 
stanch  yet  kind,  to  be  impartial  and  equally 
free  from  petty  wrath  and  petty  vanity;  in 
everything  to  be  sincere  and  disinterest- 
ed. Such  was  his  ideal,  and  in  accordance 
with  it  Victor  Hugo  spared  no  effort  to  im- 
prove the  minds  and  morals  of  men  in  gen- 
eral, and  by  his  poetry,  as  well  as  by  his 
romances  and  his  plays,  he  desired  to  con- 
stitute himself  the  champion  of  ameliora- 
tion. 

With  that  scornful  severity  to  which  he 
ever  yielded,  Planche  consigned  the  volume 
to  oblivion ;  4>ut,  in  defiance  of  all  condemna- 
tion, its  power  and  animation  were  too  plain 
to  be  overlooked.  It  contains  magnificent 
outbursts  on  the  fate  of  empires  side  by  side 
with  tender  appeals  to  the  tiny  child  whom 
he  addresses  as 

"  The  little  bandit  with  the  rosy  lips." 
His  references  to  children  are  very  touching. 
After  reproving  his  own  children  for  having 
burned  some  of  his  verses,  he  immediately 
feels  compunction, "  recalls,"  as  he  says, "  the 
startled  birds,"  asks  their  pardon  for  scold- 
ing them,  and  tells  them  that  in  their  absence 
his  life  grows  weary : 

"  Come  back,  ray  children !  hope  before  you  lies ; 
For  you  too  soon  'tis  folly  to  be  wise : 
Not  yet  has  trouble  mingled  with  your  fate ; 
Yon  know  not  yet  the  cares  thnt  men  await. 
Yes,  come,  my  children,  come  and  bring  the  smile 
That  shall  the  weary  poet  cheer  awhile  !" 

As  to  this  entire  work,  Victor  Hugo  has 
himself  defined  it  as  exhibiting 

"  How,  stone  on  stone,  two  sacred  columns  rise, 
Where  creed  on  creed  extinct  and  fallen  lies ; 
Columns  that  time  is  impotent  to  move — 
Respect  for  age,  for  children  holy  love  !" 


In  1840  Victor  Hugo  submitted  his  next 
work,  "Les  Rayons  et  les  Ombres,"  to  the 
public,  having  already  read  it  at  the  house 
of  M.  de  Lacretelle,  where  Lamartine,  6mile 
Deschamps,  Jules  Lc  F£vre,  and  many  other 
literary  men  were  accustomed  to  resort.  In 
this  he  claims  the  right  of  expressing  his 
good-will  for  all  who  labor,  his  aversion  to 
all  who  oppress;  his  love  for  all  who  serve 
the  good  cause,  and  his  pity  for  all  that  suffer 
in  its  behalf;  he  declares  himself  free  to  bow 
down  to  every  misery  and  to  pay  homage  to 
all  self-sacrifice. 

The  theme  of  Victor  Hugo's  poetry,  ju-t 
as  it  was  the  aim  of  his  life,  was  liln-rti/ 
<>f  tlioiif/Jit.  This  will  be  developed  more 
completely  in  a  subsequent  chapter  which 
we  shall  devote  to  his  political  opinions, 
but  at  present  we  are  occupied  solely  with 
the  lyrical  compositions  of  his  earlier  years. 

In  this  the  last  of  the  series  there  are  not 
many  pieces  that  are  purely  political,  al- 
though various  allusions  are  continually 
made  to  the  generally  discouraging  aspect  of 
affairs  at  the  time  in  which  they  were  pub- 
lished; and  it  was  in  consequence,  perhaps, 
of  the  lack  of  anything  to  arouse  enthusiasm 
in  the  condition  of  the  national  life  that  the 
poet  felt  himself  thrown  back  upon  the  joys 
of  home  and  the  beauties  of  nature.  Thus 
he  dwells  upon  the  memories  of  childhood — 
the  old  home  where  the  birds  sang  and  his 
mother  smiled,  the  old  scenes  now  tenanted 
by  other  occupants,  careless  of  all  interests 
but  their  own.  These  are  touched  with  a 
delicacy  and  a  power  that  must  be  owned  to 
be  very  attractive. 

Never  does  Victor  Hugo  fail  either  to  de- 
nounce the  selfish  or  to  sympathize  with  the 
suffering.  As  in  "Les  Voix  Interieures" 
he  lashes  the  heartless  Dives  who  lives  only 
for  his  gold,  dead  to  every  sentiment  of 
generosity — so  in  "Les  Rayons  et  les  Om- 
bres "  he  gazes  upon  the  poor  girl,  the  daugh- 
ter of  the  people,  singing  in  contentment  and 
simplicity  over  her  work,  and  bids  her  to  be 
industrious  and  pure,  and  listen  to  no  coun- 
sel but  that  of  virtue. 

Though  he  admired  Voltaire,  he  had  noth- 
ing but  the  most  earnest  protests  to  deliver 
against  that  sceptical  Voltairianism  that  was 
becoming  the  watchword  of  the  middle 
classes;  for,  notwithstanding  that  the  roman- 
tics had  declared  war  against  the  ancient  lit- 
erary regime,  they  were  by  no  means  of  the 
mind  to  accept  the  guidance  of  this  new 
philosopher. 


Go,  my  soul,  refined  and  pure, 

In  the  peaceful  concert  sing! 
Go,  thou  sacred  flower,  and  bloom 

By  the  desert's  lonely  spring ! 
Dreamer,  seek  thy  rest  discreet 
In  the  grotto's  calm  retreat; 

Hear,  in  shade,  the  voice  of  love; 
Find,  in  gloom,  the  light  of  day- 
Light  that  gleams  with  tender  ray, 

Voice  that  whispers  from  above. 

(Les  Rayons  et  leg  Ombres 


130 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS  TIME. 


Onwards  from  the  period  of  the  Revolution 
of  July,  Victor  stood  forward  as  a  socialist 
fighting  for  the  amelioration  of  the  people's 
sufferings;  and  the  more  he  pondered,  the 
more  his  sympathies  enlarged.  He  struggled 
more  perfectly  to  recognize  his  own  mission, 
and  he  studied  human  codes  that  he  might  be 
better  equipped  to  mitigate  human  hardships. 

In  his  view,  deep  instruction  was  to  be 
drawn  alike  from  royal  crimes  and  popular 
vices;  and  he  held  that  a  writer  was  bound  to 
employ  history  so  as  to  inspire  his  readers 
with  veneration  for  the  old,  respect  for  wom- 
en, duty  to  parents,  tenderness  to  the  suffer- 
ing, and  especially  with  sentiments  of  honor, 
hope,  and  love.  And  what  he  thus  portray- 
ed is  what  he  has  demonstrated  himself  to 
be.  Various  as  are  his  productions,  there  is 
the  one  essential  element  that  pervades  them 
all;  like  the  growth  from  the  earth,  there 
may  be  many  species,  but  they  are  kept  in 
vigor  by  the  rising  of  the  one  sap.  He  be- 
lieves in  the  unity  of  his  own  work,  and, 
though  he  does  not  put  himself  forward  as 
a  civilizing  artist,  he  has  made  civilization 
his  leading  principle  and  his  loftiest  aim. 

Long  before  his  exile,  Victor  Hugo  affirm- 
ed that  a  poet  ought  to  have  in  him  the  wor- 
ship of  conscience,  the  worship  of  thought, 
and  the  worship  of  nature;  he  should  be  like 
Juvenal,  who  felt  that  day  and  night  were 
perpetual  witnesses  within  him;  he  should 


!><•  like  Dante,  who  defined  the  lost  to  be 
those  who  could  no  longer  think;  he  should 
be  like  St.  Augustine,  who,  heedless  of  any 
accusation  of  pantheism,  declared  the  sky  to 
be  an  "intelligent"  creation.  Under  such 
inspiration  he  has  attempted  to  write  the 
poem  of  humanity.  He  loves  brightness 
and  sunshine.  The  Bible  has  been  his  book ; 
Virgil  and  Dante  have  been  his  masters;  he 
has  labored  to  reconcile  truth  and  poetry, 
knowing  that  knowledge  must  precede 
thought,  and  thought  must  precede  imagina- 
tion; while  knowledge,  thought,  and  imagi- 
nation combined  are  the  secret  of  power. 

To  the  detractors  who  have  risen  up  to 
traduce  him,  his  works  are  the  fittest  reply, 
and  Victor  Hugo  need  never  regret  the  at- 
tacks of  his  enemies,  inasmuch  as  they  have 
only  served  to  accelerate  his  greatness.  To- 
day he  is  read  by  all  who  read,  and  admired 
by  all  who  have  capacity  to  admire.  He 
has  gathered  in  the  produce  of  the  harvest 
of  which  he  sowed  the  seed;  from  the  first 
he  had  a  confidence  in  the  future  which  has 
now  been  vindicated  perfectly. 

A  comprehensive  glance  at  the  earlier  ca- 
reer of  Victor  Hugo  thus  far  depicted  can- 
not fail  to  leave  before  our  gaze  the  portrait 
of  a  man  pure  in  life,  earnest  in  purpose, 
honorable  and  independent  in  action,  and 
ever  actuated  by  the  ardent  and  indwelling 
principle  of  the  love  of  liberty. 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  IIIS   TIME. 


131 


CHAPTER  XVII. 

'Litteratnre  et  Philosophic  Mi-lees."—  Jacobite  in  1819,  Revolutionist  in  1830. — The  Poet's  Judgment  on  his 
Early  Works.— Study  of  Conscience.— Thoughts  upon  Art.— History  of  the  French  Language.— Candida- 
ture for  the  Academic.— Failure  Thrice. — Malice  of  Casimir  Delavigne. — Wrath  of  Alexandre  Duval 

Chateaubriand  and  Vieunet. — Formal  Reception. — A  Satirical  Quatrain. — Speeches  of  the  New  Member. 


MEANWHILE,  during  this  fine  and  prolific 
period,  Victor  Hugo  was  producing  other 
works.  Not  only  did  he  publish  "Notre 
Dame  de  Paris,"  to  which  we  shall  have  to 
devote  a  special  notice  hereafter,  but  in  1834 
he  committed  to  the  press  a  review  of  the 
part  he  had  been  taking  in  literary  and  po- 
litical matters.  By  putting  together  a  num- 
ber of  notes  of  his  own  proceedings  "during 
fifteen  years  of  progress,"  he  exhibited  how 
a  loyal  mind  in  the  time  of  revolution  may 
become  its  own  critic. 

This  collection  of  miscellaneous  pieces  and 
criticisms  was  published  in  two  volumes, 
and  was  entitled  ' '  Litterature  et  Philosophic 
Melees."  The  first  volume  commences  with 
the  journal  of  a  Jacobite  in  1819,  and  de- 
clares the  creed  of  the  author  of  ' '  Han  d'lsl- 
ande."  Thence  he  takes  the  multitude,  as 
it  were,  into  his  confidence,  and  reckons  up 
every  step  of  the  ladder  by  which  he  has 
mounted  until  he  comes  to  hold  the  opinions 
of  a  revolutionist  in  1834;  his  object  being 
to  demonstrate  how  his  line  of  thought  has 
been  gradually  drawn  out  and  his  range  of 
vision  perpetually  widened,  but  still  how  his 
conscience  has  consistently  led  him  on  in  the 
path  of  progress. 

In  thus  tracing  the  development  of  his 
views,  he  believes  he  is  portraying  the  con- 
dition of  mind  of  a  large  proportion  of  his 
generation,  and  the  summary  he  gives  be- 
comes not  simply  the  picture  of  a  youthful 
royalist,  but  an  instructive  historical  docu- 
ment. 

The  outline  of  what  was  working  in  his 
brain  in  1819  was  necessarily  half  effaced  by 
the  lapse  of  time,  but  the  judgment  which 
he  passes  upon  his  own  early  productions  is 
not  devoid  of  interest ;  he  says : 

"There  were  historical  sketches  and  mis- 
cellaneous essays,  there  were  criticism  and 
poetry;  but  the  criticism  was -weak,  the  poe- 
try weaker  still.  The  verses  were  some  of 
them  light  and  frivolous,  .some  of  them  trag- 


ically grand;  the  declamations  against  regi- 
cides were  as  furious  as  they  were  honest; 
the  men  of  1793  were  lampooned  with  epi- 
grams of  1754,  a  species  of  satire  now  obso- 
lete, but  very  fashionable  at  the  date  at  which 
they  were  published.  Next  came  visions  of 
regeneration  for  the  stage,  and  vows  of  loy- 
alty to  the  State;  every  variety  of  style  is 
represented;  every  branch  of  classical  knowl- 
edge is  made  subordinate  to  literary  reform; 
finally,  there  are  schemes  of  government  and 
studies  of  tragedies  all  conceived  in  college 
or  at  school." 

Smartly,  however,  as  Victor  Hugo  thus  an- 
imadverts upon  his  first  literary  efforts,  he 
asserts  that  amid  the  general  chaos  there 
was  the  fermentation  of  one  element  which 
would  ultimately  assimilate  all  to  itself; 
there  was  an  undercurrent  of  a  spirit  of  lib- 
erty, which,  in  course  of  time,  would  modify 
and  pervade  his  every  thought  of  literature, 
of  art,  and  of  society. 

He  describes  the  work  "as  a  sort  of  her- 
barium in  which  is  preserved  a  labelled  spec- 
imen of  each  of  his  various  blossomings;" 
and,  regarded  in  this  light,  the  "Litterature 
et  Philosophic  Melees"  offers  an  attractive 
study  to  any  one  who  wishes  to  get  a  com- 
prehensive view  of  the  development  of  one 
of  the  master-minds  of  his  age. 

In  the  preface  Victor  Hugo  enunciates  his 
opinion  about  art;  he  -denies  having  ever 
seriously  applied  the  terms  "classic"  and 
"romantic"  to  any  one,  and  expresses  his 
satisfaction  at  the  termination  of  the  literary 
wars  of  the  early  period  of  the  Restoration, 
making  the  remark  that  "it  is  a  good  sign 
of  progress  in  a  discussion  when  party  names 
come  to  be  disregarded."  He  asserts  that 
style  is  an  absolute  property,  and  that  in  po- 
etry an  idea  is  inseparable  from  its  style  of 
expression.  "Take  away  Homer's  style," 
he  says,  "and  you  have  only  Bitaube."  He 
next  proceeds  to  give  a  resume  of  the  his- 
tory of  the  French  language,  noting  its  prog- 


132 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  MS   TIMK. 


ress  and  anticipating  that  it  will  preserve 
its  dignity  iu  the  hands  of  writers  of  style; 
and  he  concludes  with  some  admirable  ad- 
vice to  such  as  intend  devoting  themselves 
to  letters,  and  bids  them  cherish  a  lofty  aim 
and  make  it  their  ambition  to  appeal  straight 
to  men's  hearts. 

The  entire  composition  reveals  the  secret 
of  Victor  Hugo's  thought.  His  intellect  is  en- 
larging; his  horizon  is  becoming  more  ex- 
tensive; he  feels  that  he  can  no  longer  be 
content  with  his  lyre;  he  burns  to  throw 
himself  into  public  action,  and  to  bring  his 
energies  into  contact  with  the  great  social 
struggles  of  his  day.  For  this  purpose  he 
must  make  his  way  to  the  tribune. 

Under  Louis  Philippe  there  were  but  two 
tribunes,  the  Chamber  of  Deputies  and  the 
Chamber  of  Peers.  For  Victor  Hugo  to  be 
elected  a  deputy  was  out  of  the  question ;  he 
was  not  a  householder  and  he  had  no  private 
fortune.  The  peerage  was  only  open  to  him 
on  condition  of  his  becoming  a  member  of 
one  of  the  corporations  from  which  the  king 
nominated  the  peers.  Of  these  the  Acade- 
mie  was  the  chief,  and  accordingly  for  the 
Academic  the  poet  resolved  to  become  a  can- 
didate, and  a  vacancy  occurred  in  1836. 

Dumas  has  remarked  that  it  was  a  strange 
whim  on  the  part  of  the  author  of  the 
"Odes,"  "Marion  Delorme,"  and  "Notre 
Dame  de  Paris "  to  wish  to  become  a  col- 
league with  such  men  as  M.  Droz,  M.  Brif- 
faut,  and  M.Viennet;  but,  though  he  did  not 
see  that  the  title  would  add  anything  to  the 
poet's  renown,  he  began  vigorously  to  can- 
vass for  votes  to  gratify  his  fancy.  He  call- 
ed upon  Casimir  Delavigne,  imagining  that 
the  author  of  the  ' '  Messeniennes "  would 
only  be  too  glad  to  support  so  illustrious  a 
candidate;  he  found  himself  utterly  mis- 
taken, and  in  his  own  charming  way  relates 
how  vehemently  Delavigne  protested  that  he 
would  vote  for  Dumas  with  all  his  heart,  but 
for  Hugo  never.  Casimir  Delavigne  hated 
Victor  Hugo  most  cordially.  The  reason  of 
this  antipathy,  Dumas  observes,  he  could 
never  discover;  but  when  he  himself  re- 
marks that  Delavigne,  with  his  feeble  con- 
stitution, had  only  produced  one  work,  and 
that  a  very  consumptive  one,  he  really  as- 
signs the  true  explanation.  The  poet  of  the 
imperial  era  was  sickly  and  asthmatic,  and 
he  detested  Victor  Hugo  simply  for  his  ro- 
bustness and  his  power. 

Meanwhile  the  Academicians  had  a  very 
limited  choice  of  candidates,  and  were  much 


perplexed  how  to  act.  At  length,  in  mere 
despair,  they  elected  Dupaty,  a  name  bur- 
dened with  so  light  a  literary  reputation  that 
its  weight  has  long  ceased  to  IK-  IVlt. 

In  his  drtVat.  Victor  Hugo  consoled  him- 
self by  saying, 

"I  always  thought  the  way  to  the  Acade- 
mic was  across  the  Pont  des  Arts;  I  find  that 
it  is  across  the  Pont  Neuf." 

In  1839  another  seat  fell  vacant,  and  Vic- 
tor Hugo  renewed  his  canvass,  going,  accord- 
ing to  custom,  from  the  house  of  one  Acade- 
mician to  another,  but  being  received  every- 
where with  the  same  frigid  politeness.  For 
were  not  the  majority  his  sworn  foes?  were 
they  not  writers  of  the  very  school  who  were 
scandalized  at  his  popularity?  Neverthe- 
less, he  always  jocosely  said  he  never  regret- 
ted the  expense  of  his  cabriolet  fares;  it  was 
well  worth  the  money  to  see  these  literary 
pontiffs  arrayed  in  their  dressing-gowns,  and 
it  was  a  source  of  infinite  amusement  to  hear 
them  snarl  out  their  contemptuous  judgment 
on  his  various  works.  Even  now  he  can  re- 
call the  stately  pose  of  Briffaut  and  of  La- 
cuee  de  Ceasac,  and  remembers  how,  when  he 
called  upon  the  celebrated  Baour-Lormian, 
the  concierge  was  absent, but  that  while  wan- 
dering about  the  passage  he  came  upon  a 
pair  of  shoes  so  monstrous  that  he  knew  at 
which  door  to  knock.  Nobody  but  Baour- 
Lormian  could  be  the  wearer  of  such  shoes 
as  those! 

Nor  does  he  forget  how  Alexandre  Duval 
received  him  with  ill-disguised  hostility. 

"  What  had  you  done  to  offend  him?"  we 
asked  the  poet,  recently. 

"I  had  written  'Hernani,'"  he  replied, 
with  a  smile. 

It  was  Duval  who,  in  a  dying  condition, 
insisted  upon  being  conveyed  to  the  Acade- 
mie  to  record  his  vote  against  Hugo.  When 
Royer-Collard  saw  the  poor  creature  almost 
at  his  last  gasp,  he  inquired, 

"  Who  is  the  infamous  candidate  that  drags 
this  expiring  mortal  from  his  bed?  Tell  me, 
and  I  will  vote  against  him." 

But  when  he  heard  it  was  Hugo,  he  changed 
his  tone,  and  voted  in  his  favor. 

The  successful  candidate  in  1839  was  M. 
Mole. 

Another  vacancy  occurred  in  1840,  and  for 
the  third  time  Victor  Hugo  was  unsuccessful, 
the  choice  of  the  Academicians  on  this  occa- 
sion falling  on  M.  Flourens. 

At  tost,  in  the  following  year,  1841,  he  se- 
cured his  election,  the  majority  who  voted 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS  TIME. 


133 


for  him  being  Lamartine,  Chateaubriand, 
Royer  -  Collard,  Villemain,  Charles  Nodier, 
Philippe  de  Segur,  Lacretelle,  Salvandy,  Mole, 
Pongerville,  Soumet,  Mignet,  Cousin,  Lebrun, 
Dupin  the  elder,  Thiers,  and  Viennet.  In  the 
minority  were  Casimir  Delavigne,  Scribe,  Du- 
paty,  Roger,  Jouy,  Jay,  Briffaut,  Campenon, 
Feletz,  Etienne,  Tissot,  Lacuee  de  Cessac, 
Flourens,  and  Baour.  Guizot  arrived  too 
late  to  record  his  vote;  Chateaubriand,  a 
rare  attendant  at  the  Academic,  took  care  to 
be  in  time,  considering  it  was  an  event  for 
which  he  might  well  put  himself  a  little  out 
of  the  way,  and  being  anxious  for  the  fourth 
time  to  render  his  tribute  to  a  writer  whose 
great  future  he  had  predicted. 

A  name  remarkable  among  those  who 
voted  for  Victor  Hugo  was  that  of  M.  Vien- 
net. At  the  time  when  Victor  Hugo  was 
made  a  chevalier  of  the  Legion  of  Honor, 
he  wrote  a  letter,  never  very  widely  circu- 
lated, to  the  effect  that  he  should  like  to  claim 
' '  the  cross  of  a  chevalier  for  every  one  who 
had  the  courage  to  read  right  through  any 
work  of  a  romantic,  and  the  cross  of  an  offi- 
cer for  every  one  who  had  the  wit  to  under- 
stand it."  Poor  Viennet!  he  was  converted 
afterwards,  and  must  be  forgiven. 

One  candidate  refused  to  stand  against 
Hugo.  This  was  Balzac,  who  subsequently 
presented  himself  in  1849,  but  was  defeated  by 
M.  de  Noailles,  a  writer  whose  literary  talent 
was  by  no  means  conspicuous.  Discouraged 
by  his  failure,  Balzac  wrote  to  M.  Laurant 
Jan,  begging  him  to  convey  his  thanks  to  the 
two  Academicians  who  had  honored  him  with 
their  support,  and  adding, 

' '  The  Academic  has  preferred  M.  de  No- 
ailles  to  myself.  As  an  author  I  am  his  in- 
ferior; but  in  courtesy  and  magnanimity  I 
am  his  superior,  for  I  formerly  retired  in 
favor  of  Hugo. " 

Notwithstanding  that  many  of  the  elections 
have  been  the  issue  of  literary  feuds,  or  of 
what  is  called  "political  necessity,"  the  Aca- 
demic as  a  whole  contains  many  names  that  j 
are  really  illustrious,  and  accordingly  merits 
a  high  respect.  But  public  spleen,  which  en- 
tertains respect  for  nothing,  has  vented  itself 
in  various  epigrams  on  the  institution,  by  no 
means  reckoning  that  adoption  into  its  soci- 
ety is  a  sine  qua  non  of  genius.  Victor  Hugo's 
congratulations  on  his  admission  were  by  no 
means  universal,  and  on  the  very  day  of  his 
election  he  received  a  quatrain  sent  to  him 
under  cover  by  an  unknown  hand,  and  enti- 
tled "  The  Emperor  and  the  Poet:" 


"  Ambitions  both,  both  with  perfidious  rivals  matched, 
They  now  the  highest  prizes  of  their  hope  have 

snatched ; 

Napoleon  at  the  luvalides  his  quarters  takes, 
While  Hngo  to  the  Institute  his  entry  makes  I" 

The  poet  took  his  seat  on  June  3, 1841,  in 
the  room  of  Nepomucene  Lemercier. 

His  inauguration  speech  opened  with  a 
brilliant  picture  of  the  rule  of  Napoleon.  He 
referred  to  the  emperor's  power  as  being  that 
before  which  the  whole  universe,  with  the 
exception  of  six  contemplative  poets,  was 
bowing  down  in  homage.  "Those  poets," 
he  said,  "were  Ducis,  Delille,  Madame  de 
Stae"!,  Benjamin  Constant,  Chateaubriand,  and 
Lemercier.  But  what  did  their  resistance 
mean?  Europe  was  dazzled,  and  lay  as  it 
were  vanquished  and  absorbed  in  the  glory 
of  France.  What  did  these  six  resentful 
spirits  represent?  Why,  they  represented  for 
Europe  the  only  thing  in  which  Europe  failed ; 
they  represented  independence :  and  they  rep- 
resented for  France  the  only  thing  in  which 
France  was  wanting;  they  represented  lib- 
erty." 

According  to  custom,  he  proceeded  to  eu- 
logize his  predecessor :  he  spoke  of  the  noble- 
ness of  his  life,  and  told  how  he  was  on  terms 
of  brotherly  intimacy  with  Bonaparte  the 
consul ;  but  how,  when  the  consul  became  an 
emperor,  he  was  no  longer  his  friend. 

He  concluded  his  oration  by  declaring  how 
it  was  the  mission  of  every  author  to  diffuse 
civilization,  and  avowed  that,  for  his  own 
part,  it  had  ever  been  his  aim  to  devote  his 
abilities  to  the  development  of  good-fellow- 
ship, feeling  it  his  duty  to  be  unawed  by  a 
mob,  but  to  respect  the  people ;  and  although 
he  could  not  always  sympathize  with  every 
form  of  liberty  which  was  advocated,  yet  he 
was  ever  ready  to  hold  out  the  hand  of  en- 
couragement to  all  who  were  languishing 
through  want  of  air  and  space,  and  whose 
prospects  of  the  future  seemed  full  of  gloom 
and  despair.  To  ameliorate  the  condition  of 
the  masses,  he  would  have  every  generous 
and  thinking  mind  lay  itself  out  to  devise 
fresh  schemes  of  improvement;  and  libraries, 
studios,  schools,  should  be  multiplied,  as  all 
tending  to  the  advancement  of  the  human 
race,  and  to  the  propagation  of  the  love  of 
law  and  liberty. 

His  harangue  was  warmly  applauded  by 
the  Academic,  and  received  a  much  more 
enthusiastic  welcome  than  the  somewhat 
feeble  reply  of  M.  Salvandy,  who  was  by  no 
means  anxious  to  foster  any  new  or  bold  lit- 


134 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS  TIME. 


crary  theories.  It  was  likewise  highly  praised 
by  all  the  independent  journals,  which  has- 
tened to  express  satisfaction  at  the  delivery 
of  so  strong  an  appeal  for  the  liberty  of  the 
press. 

Two  years  afterwards,  when,  according  to 
rotation,  Victor  Hugo  was  president,  Casimir 
Delavigne  died,  and  accordingly  it  fell  to  his 
lot,  by  virtue  of  his  office,  to  deliver  a  funeral 
oration  over  one  who,  for  some  inexplicable 
reason,  had  always  shown  himself  his  enemy. 
But  to  bear  malice  was  not  in  his  nature.  In 
a  few  words  he  bore  witness  to  the  fine  tal- 
ents of  Delavigne,  in  whom  he  recogni/.ed  a 
calm  and  lofty  soul,  a  kind  and  gentle  heart, 
and  an  intellect  guided  by  conscience;  and 
he  wound  up  his  peroration  by  exclaiming, 
"And  now  let  all  the  petty  jealousies  that 
follow  high  renown,  let  all  disputes  of  the 
conflicting  schools,let  all  the  turmoil  of  party- 
feeling  and  literary  rivalry,  be  forgotten!  let 
them  pass  into  the  silence  into  which  the 
departed  poet  has  gone  to  take  his  long  re- 
pose!" 

On  the  16th  of  January,  1845,  Victor  Hugo 
had  to  reply  to  the  speech  of  M.  Saint-Marc 
Girardin,  who  had  been  elected  in  the  room 
of  M.  Campenon ;  and  on  the  following  27th 
of  February  he  had  to  respond  to  the  open- 
ing address  of  M.  Sainte-Beuve. 

To  pass  any  eulogium  upon  Sainte-Beuve 
was  for  him  a  difficult  and  almost  a  cruel 
task.  Sainte-Beuve  had  once  been  his  friend 
and  admirer,  but  had  long  changed  into  an 
unrelenting  enemy  and  unscrupulous  critic. 
As  far  back  as  1835  he  had  written  to  M. 
Louis  Noel,  who,  like  himself,  had  been  one 
of  Victor  Hugo's  admirers,  to  the  following 
effect:  "You  have  been,  I  feel,  under  some 
delusion  about  Hugo.  .  .  .  He  was  not  what 
his  friends  imagined.  ...  I  was  once  fasci- 
nated with  him;  I  have  now  learned  to  under- 
stand his  true  character.  .  .  .  His  pride  is  in- 
tense, .  .  .  his  egotism  is  unbounded,  and  he 
recognizes  no  existence  beyond  his  own:  .  .  . 
ilii-  is  his  chief  fault;  his  other  failings  may 
be  mere  weaknesses  to  be  treated  with  in- 
dulgence." Nor  had  Sainte-Beuve  contented 
himself  with  these  treacherous  insinuations, 
he  had  gone  so  far  as  to  publish  in  one  of 
his  books,  which  he  named  "Poison,"  the 
most  slanderous  calumnies  against  one  who 
had  welcomed  him  to  his  own  fireside  as  a 
brother. 

For  all  this,  Victor  Hugo  had  turned  him 
off.  The  critic  vowed  that  he  would  have 
his  revenge,  and  he  took  it  in  his  own  fash- 


ion: and  on  the  1st  of  March,  1840,  he  had 
the  audacity  to  publish  an  article  in  the  /.'< 
/•//,  <f<«  l)i  a x  Mondes  which  he  entitled  "  Dix 
Aus  apr£s  en  Litterature,"  and  which  is  a 
ix>rfect  specimen  of  literary  treachery.  It 
must  have  been  a  very  difficult  article  to 
write,  as  the  author  had  to  contradict  and 
renounce  all  his  previous  statements  and 
opinions.  The  few  extracts  that  follow  will 
show  that  he  set  about  the  business  rather 
awkwardly.  He  commences  thus: 

' '  We  who  have  preached  more  crusades 
than  one,  and  those  not  always  of  the  most 
orthodox  character;  we  who,  it  may  be  feared, 
have  been  too  keen  in  our  love  of  adventure, 
not  stopping  short  of  the  rape  of  Helen  and 
of  an  imprudent  assault,  now  find  it  proper 
and  opportune — nay,  imperative — to  effect  a 
kind  of  second  marriage  and  new  union  of 
reason  between  talents  that  are  matured." 

He  goes  on  to  explain : 

"The  union  between  classics  and  roman- 
ticists is  a  noble  idea.  The  basis  of  the 
alliance  is  this:  the  romanticists  have  not 
fulfilled  their  pledges,  and  consequently  the 
only  alternative  left  to  French  literature  is  to 
betroth  them  to  the  classics." 

He  proceeds  to  deliver  a  pompous  eulogium 
upon  Chateaubriand,  whom  he  exalts  as  "the 
pre-eminent  and  most  lasting  writer  of  his 
time ;  a  grandsire  who  had  seen  the  birth  and 
death  of  many  sons  and  grandsons,"  and  be- 
stows unstinted  praise  upon  Guizot,  Cousin, 
Villemain,  Thierry,  Thiers,  and  Jouff roy.  He 
speaks  in  flattering  terms  of  Lamennais  and 
of  Lamartine;  but  when  he  comes  to  allude 
to  Victor  Hugo,  Sainte  -  Beuve  has  nothing 
but  ill-concealed  censure  and  stern  rigidity. 
He  allows,  indeed,  that  within  the  last  ten 
years  he  had  given  sufficient  proof  of  his  lyr- 
ical genius  in  "Les  Feuilles  d'Automne," 
and  of  his  power  as  a  prose-writer  in  "  Notre 
Dame  de  Paris,"  and  immediately  goes  on  to 
say 

"Yet  all  these  signs  of  magnificent  prom- 
ise do  we  forget  as  soon  as  we  think  of  his 
numerous  stubborn  relapses,  or  consider  the 
way  in  which  he  holds  to  theories  which 
public  opinion  has  already  condemned.  Sen- 
timents of  humanizing  art,  which  might  easily 
enough  be  praised,  are  utterly  ignored,  and 
M.  Hugo  clings  with  a  steadfast  persistence  to 
his  own  peculiar  style."  In  the  reactionary 
movement  which  appeals  for  a  moderate  co- 
alition, M.  Hugo  holds  himself  entirely  aloof. 
He  is  no  longer  the  leader  of  a  school  of 
thought ;  he  is  no  longer  an  author  of  whom 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS  TIME. 


135 


Sainte-Beuve  could  write,  as  he  had  written 
ten  years  before,  that ' '  all  his  works  are  char- 
acterized by  progress  in  art,  in  genius,  and  in 
intensity  of  emotion. "  He  is  now  only  ' '  a 
man  who  shines  as  it  were  from  afar;  whose 
sole  influence  is  upon  minds  that  are  capable 
of  development." 

Such  is  the  extent  to  which  an  ordinarily 
-enlightened  intellect  may  fall  when  blinded 
by  malice!  Such  is  the  depth  of  meanness 
to  which  a  writer  with  an  ill-balanced  mind 
will  condescend! 

And  now  Sainte-Beuve  had  been  elected  to 
the  Academic,  and  it  would  be  the  duty  of 
Victor  Hugo  to  respond  to  his  inauguration 
•speech.  The  occasion  naturally  excited  the 
public  curiosity.  Tickets  of  admission  were 
eagerly  sought  for,  but  no  party-feeling  of 
the  audience  was  destined  to  be  gratified. 
Not  a  single  word  of  personal  allusion  found 
its  way  into  Victor  Hugo's  speech,  unless  the 
following  sentence,  which  is  of  doubtful  in- 
terpretation, may  be  considered  in  this  light : 
"  You,  as  a  poet,  must  know  that  those  who 
suffer  retire  within  themselves  under  a  sense 
of  uneasiness,  which  in  fallen  souls  is  shame 
in  pure  souls  is  modesty." 

It  will  be  necessary  to  add  only  one  more 


characteristic  of  Victor  Hugo  as  an  Acade- 
mician. 

During  the  first  ten  years  in  which  he  held 
his  seat,  from  1841  to  1851,  he  v/as  a  most 
conscientious  member,  attending  all  the  de- 
bates. In  common  with  his  associates,  he 
had  to  peruse  the  books  sent  in  for  competi- 
tion and  to  award  the  prizes,  but  on  such  oc- 
casions he  would  never  consent  to  make  a 
written  report,  always  limiting  his  judgment 
to  a  verbal  opinion.  Sometimes  he  found 
himself  alone  in  a  minority,  but  it  nearly  al- 
ways turned  out  that  his  adjudication  was 
correct. 

One  day,  when  some  one  was  speaking  of 
the  historical  dictionary  which  the  Academie 
was  preparing,  he  made  the  observation  that, 
at  the  rate  at  which  it  was  progressing,  it 
would  take  about  3000  years  to  finish.  M. 
Renan,  afterwards  his  colleague,  subsequent- 
ly said  to  him, 

"At  first  I  thought  your  reckoning  much 
exaggerated,  but  I  have  since  verified  it  and 
found  that  it  is  perfectly  accurate." 

The  form  of  our  narrative  has  led  us  to 
leave  Victor  Hugo's  great  romance  tempora- 
rily on  one  side,  but  we  may  now  turn  our 
attention  to  "Notre  Dame  de  Paris." 


130 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  Ills    TIME. 


CHAPTER   XVIII. 

'Notre  Dame  de  Paris."— A  Shawl  and  a  Bottle  of  Ink.  —Author's  Aim  In  the  Work.  —  Archaeology  and 
Philosophy.  —Criticism.  —Opinions  of  Saiiite-Benve  and  Jules  Jauin.  —  Victor  Hugo's  Erudition. —His 
Vocabulary. —Complaints  of  the  Savons.  —  A  Well-informed  Cicerone — Plays  Adapted  from  "Notre 
Dame  de  Paris." — Contemplated  Romances — "Le  Ruin." — A  Conscientious  Tourist. — Medieval  Archi- 
tecture. 


IT  was  in  1831,  ten  years  before  he  entered 
the  Academic,  and  at  the  period  when  he 
was  aiming  at  the  regeneration  of  the  stage 
by  renovating  the  style  of  the  drama,  and 
while  he  was  giving  fresh  vitality  to  the  art 
of  poetry,  that  Victor  Hugo  brought  out 
"Notre  Dame  de  Paris,"  a  romance  publish- 
ed in  two  volumes,  and  a  work  which  of  it- 
self would  suffice  to  immortalize  its  author's 
name. 

He  had  made  a  contract  some  time  previous- 
ly with  M.  Gosselin,  the  publisher,  to  supply 
him  with  the  work;  but  when  he  got  into 
arrears  with  it  and  gave  fresh  annoyance  to 
M.  Gosselin,  who  had  already  been  vexed  at 
not  having  been  the  publisher  of  "  Hernani," 
he  was  threatened  with  legal  proceedings  to 
compel  him  to  fulfil  his  undertaking. 

The  original  agreement  had  been  that  the 
manuscript  should  be  ready  by  the  end  of 
1829;  but  in  July,  1830,  not  a  line  of  it  had 
been  written.  A  fresh  arrangement  was 
made,  including  a  covenant  that  the  book 
should  be  completed  by  the  following  De- 
cember. The  author,  however,  had  scarcely 
commenced  his  task  when  the  Revolution 
broke  out,  and  as  the  house  in  the  Rue  Jean- 
Goujon  was  in  a  dangerous  situation,  he  con- 
sidered it  desirable  to  shift  his  manuscripts 
to  the  Rue  du  Cherche-Midi,  and  had  the 
misfortune  to  find  that,  in  the  general  hurry, 
a  book  of  notes,  the  result  of  two  months'  la- 
bor, had  been  mislaid. 

The  missing  chapters,  which  were  called 
"  Impopularite, "  "Abbas  Beati  Martini," 
and  "Ceci  tuera  cela,"  did  not  appear  in 
"Notre  Dame  de  Paris"  until  the  eighth 
edition,  in  1832,  after  the  author  had  recov- 
ered them.  They  did  not,  he  said,  affect  the 
plot,  but  he  inserted  them  in  order  to  give  a 
more  complete  view  of  his  sesthetical  and 
philosophical  ideas. 

Desiring  that  the  manuscript  should  be 
finished  under  every  advantage,  M.  Gosselin 
conceded  a  further  delay,  stipulating  that  the 


work  should  be  in  his  hands  by  February, 
1831,  thus  leaving  Victor  Hugo  five  months 
to  accomplish  it. 

"The  witness  of  his  life "  has  informed  us 
what  steps  he  now  took:  he  purchased  a 
great  gray  woollen  wrapper,  that  covered 
him  from  head  to  foot;  he  locked  up  all  his 
clothes,  lest  he  should  be  tempted  to  go  out ; 
and,  carrying  off  his  ink-bottle  to  his  study, 
applied  himself  to  his  labor  just  as  if  he  had 
been  in  prison.  He  never  left  the  table  ex- 
cept for  food  and  sleep,  and  the  sole  recrea- 
tion that  he  allowed  himself  was  an  hour's 
chat  after  dinner  with  M.  Pierre  Leroux,  or 
any  other  friend  who  might  drop  in,  and  to 
whom  he  would  occasionally  read  over  the 
day's  work. 

Shortly  before  the  manuscript  was  finish- 
ed, M.  Gosselin  wrote  to  inquire  in  what 
terms  the  book  ought  to  be  described  in  the 
preliminary  advertisements.  Victor  Hugo 
replied,  "It  is  a  description  of  Paris  in  the 
fifteenth  century,  and  of  the  fifteenth  cen- 
tury as  far  as  regards  Paris.  Louis  XI.  fig- 
ures in  one  chapter,  and  is  associated  with 
the  denouement  of  the  whole.  The  book  does 
not  pretend .  to  be  historical ;  nevertheless, 
with  a  certain  amount  of  knowledge,  and 
with  a  certain  amount  of  conscientiousness, 
it  gives  glimpses  of  the  morality,  the  creed, 
the  laws,  the  arts,  and  the  civilization  of  the 
period.  And  yet  this  is  not  the  most  impor- 
tant feature  of  the  work;  if  it  has  any  spe- 
cial merit,  that  merit  lies  in  its  being  the  crea- 
tion of  imagination,  fancy,  and  caprice." 

Universally  known  as  this  powerful  work 
has  become,  it  cannot  be  expected  that  we 
should  attempt  any  elaborate  analysis  of  its 
plot ;  we  should  only  wish  to  throw  what 
light  we  can  upon  the  intention  of  the  au- 
thor, who,  in  opening  up  some  of  the  aspects 
of  the  Middle  Ages,  has  brought  this  particu- 
lar period  so  vividly  before  us. 

As  an  archaeologist  he  has  revived  for  us 
the  monuments  of  ancient  Paris;  he  has  ran- 


VICTOR  HUOO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


137 


sacked  the  annals  of  the  cathedral  of  which 
the  foundations  and  earliest  portions  date 
back  to  the  twelfth  century,  and  which,  as 
the  result  of  the  mutilations  of  some  ages 
and  the  enlargements  of  others,  has  become 
one  of  the  purest  of  chefs-d'oeuvre  of  religious 
architecture;  that  architecture  which,  from 
the  first  epoch  of  history  down  to  the  inven- 
tion of  printing,  might  be  reckoned  as  ' '  the 
great  book  of  humanity,  appealing  as  a  force 
and  an  intelligence  to  the  various  stages  of 
its  development." 

Victor  Hugo  has  always  had  an  intense 
veneration  for  the  national  architecture;  he 
has  ever  tried  to  defend  the  ancient  monu- 
ments from  modern  vandalism,  and  thus,  to 
his  mind,  the  imposing  cathedral  of  Paris 
has  become  the  symbol  of  art  and  ideas  long 
passed  away,  so  that  he  has  delighted  to 
make  it,  as  it  were,  the  heroine  of  his  ro- 
mance. 

And  to  this  artistic  enthusiasm  he  has 
joined  the  erudition  of  the  historian;  he 
has  studied  and  brought  to  light  the  super- 
stitions of  the  Parisians  of  the  Middle  Ages ; 
and  he  has  thrown  life  into  the  physiogno- 
mies, alike  strange  and  interesting,  of  schol- 
ars, vagrants,  alchemists,  poets,  merchants, 
and  magistrates,  carrying  us  through  by- 
ways to  the  Palais  de  Justice,  conducting  us 
from  the  cloister  to  the  Place  de  Greve,  and 
taking  us  from  the  Porch  of  Notre  Dame 
to  the  Cour  des  Miracles,  where  dirt  predom- 
inates, and  a  swarming  populace  of  bandits 
keep  up  a  tongue  elsewhere  unknown  or 
rather  forgotten. 

Having  deciphered  the  word  ai'ayicij  upon 
the  wall  of  a  cell  under  the  towers  of  Notre 
Dame,  Victor  Hugo  took  it  as  an  epigraph  of 
the  cathedral ;  and,  recognizing  the  stern  fa- 
tality that  urges  on  the  career  of  every  mor- 
tal in  the  turmoil  of  life  who  is  not  con- 
trolled by  the  civilized  laws  of  duty,  he  rep- 
resented it  as  the  secret  of  the  celibate  priest 
being  surrendered  to  love,  the  Bohemian  be- 
ing subjected  to  the  priest,  and  the  mother 
being  impelled  to  lead  her  daughter  to  the 
gallows.  Thus  it  was  that,  obedient  to  the 
inexorable  sway  of  fatality,  Gringoire  became 
the  type  of  the  literary  misery  of  the  period ; 
the  same  power  being  owned  by  Jean  Frol- 
lo,  the  scholar;  by  Trouillefou,  king  of  the 
vagrants;  by  Quasimodo,  the  ideal  of  de- 
formity; and  by  Esmeralda,  the  ideal  of 
grace  —  this  Esmeralda  being  a  young  girl 
with  slim  figure  and  rich  brunette  complex- 
ion, arrayed  in  bodice  of  gold  and  variegated 


skirt,  dancing  in  the  porch  upon  a  fragment 
of  old  Persian  carpet,  curving  her  arms  and 
striking  her  tambourine,  and  flashing  light- 
ning glances  from  her  large  black  eyes. 

The  basis  of  the  romance  is  art  as  exem- 
plified in  architecture,  but  the  architecture  of 
the  cathedral  becomes  a  magnificent  frame- 
work for  a  drama  full  of  excitement. 

"In  the  style,"  writes  Sainte-Beuve  at  a 
period  when  his  judgment  was  as  yet  unbi- 
assed, ' '  there  is  a  magical  facility  and  free- 
dom in  saying  all  that  should  be  said ;  there 
is  a  striking  keenness  of  observation;  espe- 
cially there  is  a  profound  knowledge  of  the 
populace,  and  a  deep  insight  into  man  in  his 
vanity,  his  emptiness,  and  his  glory,  whether 
he  be  mendicant,  vagabond,  savant,  or  sensu- 
alist. Moreover,  there  is  an  unexampled 
comprehension  of  form — an  unrivalled  ex- 
pression of  grace,  material  beauty,  and  great- 
ness ;  and  altogether  a  worthy  production  of 
an  abiding  and  gigantic  monument.  Alike 
in  the  pretty  prattlings  of  the  nymph-like 
child,  in  the  cravings  of  the  she-wolf  mother, 
and  in  the  surging  passion,  almost  reaching 
to  delirium,  that  rages  in  a  man's  brain,  there 
is  the  moulding  and  wielding  of  everything 
just  at  the  author's  will." 

Alfred  de  Mussel  acknowledged  that  the 
work  was  colossal,  but  professed  himself  un- 
able to  take  in  its  scope. 

Other  critics  were  more  pronounced;  one 
of  them,  a  contributor  to  a  leading  journal  in 
Paris,  giving  his  judgment  that  "'Notre 
Dame  de  Paris'  is  merely  an  insipid  copy 
of  Voltaire's  '  Merope. '  The  discovery  of  a 
daughter  by  a  mother  constitutes  the  whole 
plot;  of  invention  there  is  absolutely  noth- 
ing!" 

On  the  other  hand,  Jules  Janin's  judgment 
was  more  than  favorable.  He  wrote,  with 
enthusiasm  : 

"  'Notre  Dame  de  Paris'  is  powerful  and 
thrilling  reading  that  leaves  a  terrible  im- 
pression on  the  mind,  like  a  distressing  night- 
mare. Of  all  the  works  of  the  author,  it  is 
pre-eminently  that  in  which  his  fire  of  gen- 
ius, his  inflexible  calmness,  and  his  indom- 
itable will  are  most  conspicuous.  What 
accumulation  of  misfortunes  is  piled  up  in 
these  mournful  pages !  What  a  gathering  to- 
gether there  is  of  ruinous  passion  and  be- 
wildering incident !  All  the  foulness  and  all 
the  faith  of  the  Middle  Ages  are  kneaded  to- 
gether with  a  trowel  of  gold  and  of  iron. 
At  the  sound  of  the  poet's  voice,  all  that 
was  in  ruins  has  risen  to  its  fullest  heigh* , 


138 


VIC TOU  IIUGO  AND  JUS    TIME. 


reanimated  by  his  breath.  What  movements 
are  stirred  up  in  those  narrow  streets,  those' 
crowded  quarters,  those  ancient  churches ! 
What  fiery,  warring  passions  are  excited  in 
the  minds  of  those  merchants,  that  soldiery, 
those  cut -throats!  Each  one,  priest  and 
woman  alike,  is  arrayed  in  the  proper  garb; 
unless,  indeed,  the  passion  is  naked,  as-  of  a 
beast  in  the  wilderness! 

"Victor  Hugo  has  followed  his  vocation 
as  poet  and  architect,  as  writer  of  history 
and  romance ;  his  pen  has  been  guided  alike 
by  ancient  chronicle  and  by  his  own  person- 
al genius ;  he  has  made  the  bells  of  the  great 
city  all  to  clang  out  their  notes;  and  he  has 
made  every  heart  of  the  population,  except 
that  of  Louis  XL,  to  beat  with  life!  Such  is 
the  book;  it  is  a  brilliant  page  of  our  history 
which  cannot  fail  to  be  a  crowning  glory  in 
the  career  of  its  author." 

To  add  anything  to  such  a  testimony  as 
this  would  be  superfluous,  as  it  would  be  to 
speak  any  more  in  praise  of  a  work  which 
has  been  lauded  by  Eugene  Sue  and  by  Be- 
ranger;  it  is  worthy  of  the  minister  of  which 
its  title  bears  the  name;  it  has  been  read 
only  to  be  read  again.  None  now  would 
venture  to  disparage  the  romance  as  a  work 
of  genius;  it  is  only  about  the  use  of  a  few 
technical  terms  and  the  employment  of  some 
obsolete  expressions  that  there  is  any  longer 
any  dispute. 

Undoubtedly  Victor  Hugo's  vocabulary  is 
very  extensive,  and  he  does  not  hesitate  to 
employ  terms  that  are  by  no  means  general- 
ly understood  by  the  masses.  He  has  be- 
stowed almost  unlimited  time  upon  lexi- 
cons, and  has  not  contented  himself  with  the 
ordinary  medium  of  communicating  his 
thoughts;  not  but  what  his  usual  style  is 
sufliciently  clear,  and  when  it  suits  him  he 
can  be  terse  and  concise;  it  is  only  when  he 
deems  it  necessary  to  make  his  words  a  pict- 
ure of  what  he  would  describe  that  he  re- 
sorts to  language  which  was  peculiar  to  the 
age  in  which  his  characters  lived  and  acted. 
Erudition,  he  held,  was  not  unbecoming  in 
an  author;  and. thus,  in  "Notre  Dame  de 
Paris,"  he  reckoned  it  advantageous  to  have 
so  far  studied  the  glossaries  of  the  Middle 
Ages  as  to  utilize  the  phraseology,  to  revive 
with  truth  and  accuracy  the  manners  and  the 
features  of  the  time. 

The  result  of  this  has  been  that  certain  com- 
mentators have  alleged  that  his  vocabulary 
has  been  based  upon  a  counterfeit  science, 
and  that  it  would  inflict  unnecessary  torture 


upon  the  Saumaises  of  the  future,  who  would 
Ix-  driven  to  desperation  to  discover  the  mean- 
ing of  such  terms  as  la  cosaque  d  mahoitres, 
lea  voulgiera,  lea  croocquiniers,  le  gattimard 
tadie  d'encre,  le  fiasteur,  and  such  like. 

But  in  reply  it  may  be  urged  that  genuine 
students,  worthy  of  the  name,  have  not  been 
required  to  make  any  deep  researches  to  es- 
tablish the  ignorance  of  such  critics.  A  very 
little  investigation  might  have  served  to  in- 
form them  that  in  the  time  of  Louis  XI.  the 
cosaque  a  malwitres  was  a  robe  with  puffed 
sleeves;  while  in  the  chronicle  of  Jacques 
Duclere  (1467)  it  is  recorded  that  the  high- 
born ladies  of  the  court  of  Philip  le  Bon  wore 
great  malmtres  on  their  shoulders  in  order  to 
make  themselves  look  more  dressy  and  to 
show  off  the  slope  of  their  necks.  And  just 
so  in  the  other  cases:  tsoulgiers  were  foot-sol- 
diers armed  with  the  voulge  or  vouge,  a  single- 
edged  blade  fixed  to  a  pole;  craacquiniers 
were  cross-bowmen;  &  gattimard  tache  d'encre 
was  simply  an  inkstand;  a  hasteur,  a  keeper 
of  a  cook-shop;  the  whole  of  which  might 
have  been  ascertained  by  merely  consulting 
Ducange's  "Glossarium  Mediae  et  Infimae 
Latinitatis." 

A  correspondent  of  the  curious  magazine 
called  the  Intermediare  has  remarked  that 
the  author,  in  order  to  give  his  romance  the 
true  archaic  coloring,  has  gone  to  the  foun- 
tain-head for  his  knowledge,  and  that  con- 
sequently every  incident  and  every  expres- 
sion may  be  justified  by  reference  to  Monteil's 
"Histoire  des  Francais,"De  Sauval's"His- 
toire  des  Antiquites  de  Paris, "and  Roque- 
fort's "Glossaire  Roman." 

Not  content  with  accusing  Victor  Hugo  of 
pedantry,  some  of  the  reviewers  began  to 
charge  him  with  ignorance  of  grammar,  the 
dispute  turning  very  much  upon  the  gender 
of  the  word  amulette,  and  serving  in  a  way  to 
recall  the  remark  made,  we  believe,  by  Alfred 
Delvau,  to  the  effect  that  critics  have  no  right 
' '  to  amuse  themselves  like  so  many  monkeys 
by  picking  the  vermin  from  the  lion's  skin." 

Notwithstanding  the  anxiety  felt  by  its 
publisher, "  Notre  Dame  de  Paris  "had  an 
immediate  success.  Within  a  year  it  reached 
an  eighth  edition,  and  the  original  vignettes 
by  Tony  Johannot  were  replaced  by  some  en- 
gravings by  Celestin  Nanteuil.*  The  num- 


•  For  these  engravings,  four  in  number,  Nantenil 
received  the  sum  of  sixty  francs  —  a  statement  that 
may  serve  to  measure  the  liberality  of  publishers  in 
Paris  fifty  years  ago. 


LA  ESMKRALDA. 


140 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


ber  of  subsequent  editions  can  scarcely  be 
estimated. 

The  sensation  caused  by  the  work  was 
not  long  in  attracting  crowds  to  the  old  ba- 
silica of  Philippe  Auguste,  where  the  cice- 
rone made  a  good  harvest.  One  day  while 
Victor  Hugo  was  conducting  a  party  of  ladies 
over  "his  cathedral,"  the  cicerone  came  as 
usual  to  render  his  services.  On  reaching 
the  belfry  -  entrance  above  the  gallery,  he 
opened  the  door  of  a  cell,  and  proceeded  to 
tell  his  story: 

"Here  is  the  cell  where  the  illustrious  M. 
Hugo  wrote  his  popular  work.  He  never 
left  the  spot  till  he  had  finished  writing. 
There  you  see  his  table,  his  chair,  his  bed. 
He  took  hardly  any  food,  and  that  of  the 
plainest  kind." 

The  poet  gravely  thanked  the  intelligent 
verger  for  these  historical  details,  and,  with 
a  uracious  smile,  bowed,  and  slipped  a  gra- 
tuity into  his  expectant  hand. 

Hardly  had  the  book  issued  from  the  press 
before  an  attempt  was  made  by  a  dramatist 
named  Dubois,  of  the  Theatre  de  Versailles. 
to  convert  it  into  a  play.  This  consisted  of 
seven  scenes,  in  three  acts,  Quasimodo  being 
made  the  principal  character.  The  theatrical 
registries  make  no  mention  of  the  work,  to 
which  we  here  refer  chiefly  as  a  literary  cu- 
riosity. It  was  published  both  in  Paris  and 
Versailles,  and  sold  by  booksellers  who  dealt 
in  novelties;  but  it  was  performed  only  a  few 
times  at  the  Theatre  du  Temple. 

Altogether  of  a  different  character  was  the 
drama  in  five  acts  compiled  by  Paul  Foucher, 
Victor  Hugo's  brother-in-law,  and  brought 
out  in  1850.  This  proved  a  great  success.  It 
was  afterwards  revised  and  modified  by  M. 
Paul  Meurice,  who  made  it  adhere  still  more 
closely  to  the  original  work.  In  this  im- 
proved form  it  had  a  long  run  at  the  Porte- 
Saint-Martin  in  1879. 

At  the  solicitation  of  M.  Gosselin  and  other 
publishers,  Victor  Hugo  consented  to  write 
some  more  romances,  and  they  were  adver- 
tised as  being  in  preparation.  One  of  these 
was  to  be  called  "La  Quiquengrogne."  It 
was  intended  to  give  an  idea  of  feudal  medi- 
aevalism  corresponding  to  the  picture  of  ec- 
clesiastical medievalism  that  had  been  drawn 
in  "Notre  Dame  de  Paris."  It  was  to  be 
followed  by  another,  of  which  the  title  was 
"Le  Fils  de  la  Bossue."  Neither  of  these 
books,  however,  was  published ;  and,  al- 
though they  were  conceived  some  fifty  years 
ago,  they  have  never  yet  appeared.  The 


romance  that  was  next  in  order  to  ' '  Notre 
Dame  de  Paris"  was  "Les  Miserables." 

Having  now  reviewed  all  Victor  Hugo's 
romances  as  far  as  1840,  we  may  mention 
"  Le  Dernier  Jour  d'un  Condamne"  and 
"Claude  Gueux,"and  leave  them  awhile,  to 
be  the  subject  of  a  later  chapter. 

Enough  has  been  said  to  demonstrate  how 
the  poet  had  now  made  his  mark  in  every 
form  of  literature  so  as  to  rank  at  the  head 
of  the  writers  of  his  time ;  and  it  will  be  seen 
not  only  how  constant  were  the  difficulties 
with  which  he  had  to  contend,  but  how  versa- 
tile was  the  power  and  how  singular  the  cour- 
age that  characterized  all  his  productions. 

About  this  time  he  wrote  "Le  Rhin,"  a 
work  that  exhibits  another  side  of  his  gen- 
ius. This  consists  of  a  series  of  letters,  sup- 
posed to  be  written  to  a  friend,  giving  a 
humorous  account  of  an  archaeological  tour. 
The  style  is  racy,  but  affords  the  author 
every  opportunity  of  illustrating  his  wide 
erudition.  Under  the  character  of  a  good- 
natured  savant,  he  carries  his  readers  from 
Aix-la-Chapelle  to  Cologne,  thence  to  May- 
ence  and  Frankfort,  visiting  the  numerous 
monuments  on  his  way,  relating  the  various 
legends  connected  with  town,  village,  or  cas- 
tle, digressing  into  philosophy  and  politics, 
and  introducing  a  number  of  graphic  stories 
full  of  interest  and  amusement. 

He  sketches  as  he  goes,  and  his  drawings 
manifest  his  unbounded  admiration  of  the 
scenery  of  the  river  and  the  old  "burgs" 
upon  its  banks.  As  a  tourist  he  is  singu- 
larly intrepid,  clinging  to  branches  and  tufts 
of  grass,  and  clambering  all  alone  to  obtain 
views  from  the  summit  of  the  ruins.  He 
describes  with  much  minuteness  the  archi- 
tecture that  he  admires,  and  rarely  fails  to 
vent  his  wrath  upon  white  fa9ades  with  green 
shutters.  At  the  same  time,  he  sees  beauties 
wThere  others  would  espy  defects,  and  owns 
that  he  has  a  perfect  mania  for  investigating 
old  tumble-down  buildings  and  for  decipher- 
ing .obliterated  inscriptions,  declaring  that 
]  he  no  more  gets  weary  of  repetitions  in  aft 
than  a  lover  grows  tired  of  painting  the  por- 
trait of  his  mistress.  At  times  he  is  indig- 
nant at  the  discovery  of  some  incongruity, 
as  spiral  volutes  intermingled  with  ogives; 
but  at  times,  too,  he  is  enchanted  by  ara- 
besques that  were  worthy  of  Raphael. 

His  descriptions  and  his  illustrations  are 
equally  admirable:  the  painter  and  the  poet 
go  hand-in-hand. 

For  the  commonplace  he  seems  to  have 


NOTRE  DAME  DE   PARIS. 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


no  eye.  His  affection  is  lavished  upon  the 
mediaeval  ages  which  he  had  so  laboriously 
brought  back  to  life;  and,  as  he  looks  upon 
the  venerable  ruins,  nothing  stirs  up  his 
wrath  more  vehemently  than  to  see  what 
attempts  have  been  made  to  embellish  them 


in  later  times,  and  it  is  a  very  pang  to  his 
heart  to  find  any  dilapidated  tower  of  Ger- 
many not  left  to  the  beauty  of  natural  de- 
cay, but  utilized  by  some  hideous  transfor- 
mation designed  as  an  improvement  by  some 
modern  architect. 


144 


AND    Ills    y/.l/A'. 


CHAPTER   XIX. 

The  Place  Roynle.— The  Poet's  Apartments. — Angnste  de  ChiUillon.—  Victor  Hugo's  Saltm.—\  Legendary 
Dnis. — Literary  Society.—  Introduction  to  Auguste  Vncquerie. — M.  Paul  Meurice.— Marriage  of  Charles 
Vacqnerie  to  Le"opoldiue  Hugo.— Fatal  Accident  at  Villenuier.— Madame  Victor  Hugo's  Picture.— The 
Poet's  Nocturnal  Strolls.— Assaulted  in  the  Hue  des  Tonruelles. 


\V  1 1 1  I.K  t  lie  rehearsals  of  "  Le  Roi  s' Amuse  " 
were  going  on  in  October,  1832,  Victor  Hugo 
removed  from  tin-  Hue  Jean-Goujon  to  the 
Place  Koyalc. 

The  house  in  which  he  took  up  his  resi- 
dence was  No.  6,  (lie  sjimc  which  it  was  said 
had  been  the  home  of  Marion  Delorme.  His 
reason  for  settling  in  this  locality  was  that  he 
might  In-  near  Charles  Nodicr,  who  \v;is  then 
at  the  Arsenal;  and  it  happened  also  about 
the  same  time  that  Theophile  Gautier  mine 
to  live  at  the  opposite  corner  of  the  square. 
The  poet's  suite  of  apartments  was  on  the 
second  lloor,  and  was  approached  by  a  wide 
and  handsome  staircase.  A  door  opened  into 
the  dining-room,  which  was  adorned  with 
some  fine  tapestry,  representing  scenes  in  the 
"Romance  of  the  Rose;"  at  the  farther  end 
were  two  doors,  one  leading  to  the  salon,  the 
other  to  a  passage  in  which  were  the  bed- 
chambers;  beyond  which  was  the  study,  a 
room  full  of  quaint  pieces  of  furniture,  and 
overlooking  an  inner  court-yard. 

The  ceiling  in  the  study  was  decorated  with 
a  painting  by  Auguste  de  Chatillon,  called  "  Le 
Moine  Rouge  " — almost  as  strange  a  produc- 
tion as  Louis  Boulanger's  "Ronde  du  Sab- 
bat," its  subject  being  a  priest  robed  in  red 
lying  full  length  and  reading  a  Bible,  which 
is  supported  by  a  nude  female  figure.  Cha- 
tillon, although  he  could  not  be  said  to  be 
famous  in  1823,  was  acquiring  a  reputation 
which  he  never  was  able  to  maintain.  He 
squandered  away  his  talents,  and  ultimately 
died  in  extreme  poverty,  without  leaving  be- 
hind him  any  valuable  monument  of  his  pow- 
ers. In  1836  he  painted  a  picture  represent- 
ing the  first  communion  of  Victor  Hugo's 
eldest  son  in  the  church  of  Fourqueux. which 
was  never  exhibited,  but  was  retained  by  Ma- 
dame Vic-tor  Hugo  in  her  own  chamber.  It 
is  now  in  Guernsey.  He  likewise  painted  a 
portrait  of  Victor  Hugo  himself,  upon  which 
Mery,  in  his  "Melodies  Poetiques,"  has 
composed  a  fine  ode,  into  which  he  intro- 


duced many  of  the  leading  points  in  the  po- 
et's life. 

As  for  the  salon,  it  might  almost  !><•  dr- 
seribed  as  a  picture-gallery,  so  numerous  were 
the  artists,  including  Achille  Deveria,  Celes- 
tin  Nanteuil,  David  d'Angers,  and  others, 
who  sought  the  honor  of  being  allowed  to 
contribute  to  the  decoration  of  the  apartment. 
At  one  end  was  a  high  mantel-piece  after  the 
taste  of  the  poet,  covered  with  drapery,  and 
holding  some  fine  China  vases;  on  the  left 
was  a  sort  of  dais,  which  demands  especial 
notice,  inasmuch  as  it  has  given  rise  to  some 
absurd  stories. 

Ii  has  in -en  alleged  that  Victor  Hugo,  in 
his  vanity,  used  to  sit  on  a  throne  upon  this 
dais  beneath  a  canopy,  and  extend  his  hand 
to  be  kissed  by  his  admirers,  who  would 
mount  the  steps  upon  their  knees.  As  mat- 
ter of  fact,  there  were  no  steps  and  no  throne; 
there  was  simply  some  drapery  arranged  in 
an  artistic  way,  having  a  banner,  that  had 
been  brought  from  the  palace  of  the  Dey  of 
Algiers,  as  a  background,  under  which  stood 
a  common  sofa,  which  was  ordinarily  used  as 
a  seat,  although  occasionally  it  did  duty  as  a 
bed.  About  the  year  1840  Victor  Hugo's 
bust  was  placed  close  beside  it. 

Some  arm-chairs  of  the  time  of  Louis  XV., 
made  of  gilt  wood  and  covered  with  tapes- 
try, completed  the  furniture  of  the  reception- 
room. 

Opposite  the  dais  were  three  large  windows 
reaching  to  the  ground,  and  opening  on  to  a 
balcony  that  ran  the  whole  length  of  the  .«/- 
Ion,  and  overlooked  the  square.  Here  it  was 
that  the  poet's  friends  would  sip  their  coffee 
and  chat  with  him  until  quite  late,  especially 
on  Sundays,  when  the  gatherings  would  be 
most  numerous.  The  stone  balcony  no  longer 
c\i-t-.  it  fell  down  shortly  after  the  poet  left 
the  place. 

Never  was  salon  more  hospitable.  It  was 
the  resort  for  all  who  had  a  name  in  litera- 
ture or  art,  and  who  came  not  attracted  more 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


145 


by  the  glory  of  the  master  than  by  his  kind-  [  with  seeing  his  friends  at  home,  rarely  going 
ness  and   affability.     Among  many  others   anywhere,  even  to  visit  Charles  Nodier,  who 


Pierre  Dupont,  the  future  author  of  ' '  Les 
Breufs,"  there  found  a  welcome,  enjoying  a 
fireside  where  he  might  try  his  pinions,  and, 


lived  close  by. 

The    influx    of    new    visitors    that    now 
found  their  way  to  the  Place  Royale  made 


VICTOR   HUGO  8   HOUSE   IN   THE   PLACE   KOYAI.E. 


according  to  Baudelaire's  expression,  allow 
the  flowers  of  his  brain  to  begin  to  expand. 

For  some  time  Victor  Hugo  had  been  in 
the  habit  of  attending  the  receptions  of  Ma- 
dame Ancelot,  who  called  him  ' '  the  great 
rebel;" but  he  now  began  to  content  himself 
10 


some  little  commotion  among  the  earlier 
friends  of  the  poet,  and  various  petty  jeal- 
ousies were  the  result.  Among  the  older  ad- 
mirers of  Victor  Hugo  who  had  been  drawn 
to  him  by  his  genius  were  Auguste  Le  Pre- 
vost,  the  Norman  antiquary,  and  his  fellow- 


140 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


countryman  Ulric  Guttinger,  the  poet.  One 
day,  however,  Guttinger  felt  himself  so  neg- 
lected in  comparison  with  the  new-comers 
who  were  receiving  such  a  large  share  of  at- 
tention that  he  left  the  house  in  disgust,  and, 
vowing  that  lie  would  never  cross  the  tliroh 
old  again,  started  back  to  Normandy.  In 
vain  his  friend  Le  Prevost  remonstrated  with 
him;  he  wrote  him  a  letter  urging  him  to  ac- 
cept Hugo's  invitations  as  an  honor;  luit  no 
representations  could  make  Guttinger  over- 
look his  grievance. 

One  of  the  most  noteworthy  among  tin- 
new-comers,  both  on  account  of  his  talents 
and  his  unwavering  attachment  to  Victor 
Hugo,  was  Auguste  Vacquerie.  He  had 
come  to  Paris  with  the  especial  object  of 
making  the  poet's  acquaintance,  and  he  has 
described  the  aspirations  of  his  youth  in  a 
volume  of  exquisite  poetry,  which  he  sent 
forth  to  the  world  under  the  title  of  ' '  Mes 
Premieres  Aunees  de  Paris."  Born  at  Ville- 
quier,  in  La  Seine  Inferieure,  in  1820,  he  com- 
menced his  education  at  the  Lycee  in  Rouen ; 
his  school  career  being  so  successful  as  to 
justify  him  in  desiring  to  go  to  the  metrop- 
olis in  order  to  devote  himself  to  art.*  His 
father,  a  ship-owner  at  Havre,  readily  acqui- 
esced in  his  wish. 

It  was  quite  common  at  that  tune  for  the 
Parisian  colleges  to  employ  agents  to  make 
the  round  of  the  provincial  schools,  and  to 
pick  up  the  clever  lads  who  would  be  likely 
to  carry  off  the  prizes  in  open  competitions, 
such  success  on  the  part  of  their  students 
being  always  attended  with  pecuniary  ad- 
vantages to  the  institutions  themselves.  One 
of  these  travelling  agents  offered  an  exhibi- 
tion to  Auguste  Vacquerie  if  he  would  come 
up  to  the  Pension  Favart.  His  father  de- 
clined the  exhibition,  but  Auguste,  neverthe- 
less, proceeded  to  the  pension  in  preference 
to  any  other,  mainly  because  it  was  only  a 
few  steps  from  Victor  Hugo's  residence  in 
the  Place  Royale. 

The  principal  at  the  Pension  Favart  con- 
sidered it  would  be  best  for  his  young  Rou- 
en student  to  go  in  for  a  double  second,  and 
Auguste  consented  to  the  proposal.  Un- 


*He  has  expressed  his  longing  in  a  poem  dedicated 
to  Paul  Menrice : 
"The  world  had  brought  the  wondrous  echo  near, 

I  longed  the  very  voice  itself  to  hear  ; 

Bat  though  for  Paris  ardently  I  sighed, 

Paris  to  me  meant  Hugo,  nought  beside ; 

Paris  itself  the  shrine  of  Hugo's  fame, 

The  towers  of  Notre  Dame  proclaimed  his  name!" 


fortunately,  at  the  examination,  the  professor 
was  a  whimsical  old  man  who  had  a  special 
.t\  t  ision  to  Normandy  and  all  its  people,  and 
who,  consequently,  gave  him  only  an  ordina- 
ry second-class  certificate. 

Naturally  disappointed,  Auguste  went  to 
the  principal  and  claimed  his  right  to  enter 
his  name  for  the  examination  in  rhetoric. 
This  could  not  be  refused  him,  hut  so  irritat- 
ed was  the  principal  at  the  result  of  the  for- 
mer examination  that  he  lost  no  opportunity 
of  chastising  the  young  student.  One  pre- 
text for  punishment  was  of  perpetual  recur- 
rence. Although  the  educational  depart- 
ment was  well  attended  to,  the  domestic  ar- 
rangements were  miserably  neglected,  and 
the  food  was  often  so  bad  that  Auguste  re- 
fused to  touch  it,  and  made  his  meal  from  a 
dry  crust  of  bread.  One  day  when  the  soup 
was  more  disgusting  than  usual,  and  he  was 
about  to  receive  his  wonted  chastisement  for 
daintiness,  a  messenger  came  in  bringing  the 
honor  list  from  the  College  Charlemagne. 
A  mere  glance  was  enough  to  show  the  prin- 
cipal that  the  name  at  the  head  of  the  roll 
was  that  of  A\iguste  Vacquerie.  In  a  mo- 
ment his  wrath  subsided,  and,  tasting  the 
soup,  he  allowed  that  it  was  "  execrable,"  and 
threatened  to  dismiss  the  cook.  Thencefor- 
ward not  only  were  the  meals  better  served, 
but  the  successful  pupil  was  treated  with 
proper  consideration. 

At  this  examination  it  was  that  Auguste 
Vacquerie  and  Paul  Meurice  first  met,  the 
result  being  a  sincere  and  lasting  friendship 
between  them.  Paul  Meurice,  the  son  of  a 
goldsmith,  had  great  talents  and  a  large  heart ; 
he  was  brother,  on  the  mother's  side,  of  Fro- 
ment  Meurice,  the  well-known  artist.  The 
bond  of  union  between  Auguste  and  Paul 
was  confirmed  in  the  discovery  that  they 
both  "lived  in  the  same  poet;"  equally  to 
them  both  the  name  of  Victor  Hugo  was  the 
name  of  a  master,  of  whom,  in  ardent  en- 
thusiasm, they  were  mutually  ready  to  own 
themselves  the  loyal  though  humble  disciples. 

Never  losing  sight  of  the  inducement 
which  had  originally  brought  him  to  Paris, 
Auguste  Vacquerie  ventured  after  a  while  to 
compose  an  epistle  in  verse,  stating  his  ambi- 
tion to  be  introduced  to  the  great  poet,  and 
had  it  conveyed  to  the  Place  Royale.  Victor 
Hugo,  always  kind  to  the  young  and  obscure, 
replied  that  he  should  be  most  happy  to  re- 
ceive a  visit. 

To  describe  the  pride  and  ecstasy  with 
which  the  young  student  received  the  invita- 


148 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   7 /)//.. 


tion  would  be  impossible.  Like  Tlu'ophilr 
Gautier,  he  trembled  with  agitation,  hut  lost 
no  time  in  availing  himself  of  the  kind  per- 
mission. Victor  Hugo  quite  appreciated  tin- 
young  man's  devotion,  and  accurately  dis- 
cerned his  talent.  He  invited  him  to  dine 
with  him  nearly  every  week,  and  in  a  short 
-time  insisted  upon  his  friend  Paul  Meuriee 


tcntion  to  him;  she  constantly  sent  him  nu- 
tritious delieaeies,  and  when  he  was  conva- 
lescent he  felt  himself  bound  to  the  poet's 
family  by  a  still  closer  affection.  In  ac- 
knowledgment of  the  kind  care  that  had 
been  bestowed  upon  his  son,  M.  Vacquerie 
begged  to  be  allowed  to  place  his  chateau 
at  Villequier  at  .Madame  Victor  Hugo's  dis- 


CHAKLES  VACQUERIE. 


accompanying  him.  The  intimacy  gradual- 
ly grew  closer;  the  two  friends  were  con- 
stantly in  the  poet's  salon,  especially  on  Sun- 
days, when  nothing  would  delight  them  more 
than  to  take  his  sons  for  a  walk. 

Just  before  the  close  of  his  college  career 
Auguste  Vacquerie  fell  seriously  ill,  and  Ma- 
dame Victor  Hugo  was  unwearied  in  her  at- 


posal  for  the  summer  vacation.  She  grate- 
fully accepted  the  offer,  and  in  due  time 
started  off  with  her  four  children,  all  highly 
delighted  at  the  prospect  of  visiting  Nor- 
mandy. 

During  this  holiday  visit  Auguste's  broth- 
er Charles  became  acquainted  with  Leopol- 
dine  Hugo.  Falling  in  love  almost  at  first 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


149 


sight,  they  were  soon  formally  engaged,  and 
their  marriage  took  place  in  the  following 
spring  in  1843,  the  wedding  breakfast  being 
given  at  the  Place  Royale. 

Victor  Hugo  expressed  his  good  wishes  for 
his  daughter's  happiness  in  some  verses  that 
were  afterwards  included  in  the  collection 
published  as  "  Les  Contemplations:" 

"  Thy  lover  love,  and  in  his  constant  love  abide  ! 
That  lover  wooes  thee,  wiiis  thee,  claims  thee  for  his 

bride. 

Fain  would  we  keep  thee  lingering  here  awhile ; 
But  now  a  double  duty  claims  thy  equal  care. 
Leave  us  thy  fond  regrets*,  one  tear  of  anguish  spare, 
Theii  greet  thy  new  abode  with  beaming  smile." 

Five  months  later  this  union  had  a  fatal 
termination  under  most  distressing  circum- 
stances. 

The  Vacquerie  family  property  at  Ville- 
quier  is  on  the  banks  of  the  Seine,  which  is 
tidal  as  far  as  Rouen ;  but  the  periodical  ris- 
ing of  the  water  was  a  matter  of  no  uneasi- 
ness to  the  family,  who  were  accustomed  to 
make  excursions  almost  daily  from  Villequier 
to  Caudebec.  One  of  these  excursions  was 
arranged  for  the  4th  of  September,  when  M. 
Charles  Vacquerie,  with  his  wife,  his  uncle, 
and  cousin,  started  to  make  a  trial  trip  in  a 
large  new  boat.  They  all  set  out  in  high 
spirits  upon  what  was  quite  an  ordinary  out- 
ing; but  a  sudden  squall  came  on,  and  the 
boat  capsized.  Leopoldine  had  always  been 
taught  that,  in  the  event  of  being  upset,  the 
safest  thing  to  do  was  to  cling  to  the  boat, 
and  accordingly  she  now  instinctively  grasp- 
ed its  side  with  convulsive  alarm.  Her 
husband  was  a  good  swimmer,  and,  anx- 
ious to  carry  her  off,  did  his  utmost  to  make 
her  relax  her  hold.  But  all  his  efforts  were 
unavailing;  in  her  agony  she  seemed  to  have 
embedded  her  finger-nails  in  the  wood;  his 
very  attempt  to  break  her  fingers  proved  in- 
effectual. He  was  but  a  few  yards  from  the 
shore,  but  finding  it  impossible  to  save  her, 
he  determined  not  to  survive  her,  and  taking 
her  into  his  embrace,  sank  with  her  in  the 
stream.  The  two  bodies  were  recovered  a 
few  hours  afterwards. 

They  were  buried  in  the  little  cemetery  at 
Villequier.  Close  beside  them  lies  Leopol- 
dine's  mother,  Madame  Victor  Hugo,  whose 
remains,  at  her  own  dying  request,  were 
brought  hither  from  Brussels  in  1870,  un- 
der the  care  of  her  two  devoted  friends,  Au- 
guste  Vacquerie  and  Paul  Meurice. 

Madame  Victor  Hugo  felt  her  daughter's 
loss  most  acutely;  her  tears  fell  bitterly  in 


the  home  of  which  she  was  the  ornament 
and  the  pride.  The  Addle  Foucher  who  had 
been  the  substance  of  his  early  dreams  had 
now  long  been  the  presiding  genius  of  the 
poet's  household.  Something  of  the  dark 
Spanish  beauty  and  attractive  form  of  his 
wife  may  always  be  detected  lurking  be- 
neath the  conception  of  La  Esmeralda,  Dona 
Sol,  Sara  la  Baigneuse,  Thiisbe,  and  all  the 
other  brunettes  who  animate  Victor  Hugo's 
poetical  seraglio.  Raphael  perpetually  re- 
produced the  head  of  La  Fornarina  in  his 
pictures,  but  Victor  Hugo  may  be  said  to 
have  set  the  first  example  among  French- 
men of  a  poet  devoting  his  lyre  so  constant- 
ly to  his  wife. 

A  contemporary,  in  a  work  entitled  "Les 
Jolies  Femmes  de  Paris  et  de  la  Province," 
has  remarked  this  specialty  by  observing 
how  unweariedly  he  seeks  to  immortalize 
the  companion  of  his  joys  and  sorrows,  il- 
lustrating his  notice  by  the  following  verses, 
which  are  but  a  specimen  of  others  that  are 
similar,  and  which  in  the  original  make  the 
reader  hardly  know  whether  to  admire  most 
the  poet  who  composed  or  the  woman  who 
inspired  them: 

"  To  thee  my  duteous  lyre  shall  sing; 
To  thee  its  constant  homage  bring  ! 

"None  but  pure  and  lofty  deed 
Can  from  thy  pure  soul  proceed ; 
Soul  by  passion  ne'er  oppressed, 
Nor  by  anger  e'er  distressed  I 

"  Give  her  thy  blessing,  whosoe'er  thou  art ; 
She  sheds  a  radiance  on  each  loving  heart ! 
To  me  a  solace  'midst  life's  anxious  fears, 
Retreat  hereafter  in  decaying  years ; 
A  tutelary  saint,  whate'er  betides, 
That  o'er  the  Lares  of  my  home  presides  !" 

As  Victor  Hugo's  fame  increased,  the  calm 
serenity  of  his  early  years  of  married  life 
was  necessarily  somewhat  disturbed  by  the 
troubles  and  anxieties  that  glory  brings,  but 
in  the  Place  Royale  Madame  Victor  Hugo 
relates  that  they  lived  in  much  happiness 
with  the  children  who  were  their  pride  and 
their  delight.  Their  friend,  M.  Louis  Bou- 
langer,  painted  a  portrait  of  the  charming 
lady,  which  was  exhibited  at  the  Salon,  and 
which  received  much  notice,  being  thus  de- 
scribed : 

"A  full,  well -developed  bust,  white  arms 
of  perfect  form;  a  pair  of  plump,  delicate 
hands  that  a  queen  might  envy  ;  the  hips 
high,  and  setting  off  a  figure  that  was  fault- 
less in  its  contour  and  flexibility." 

Such  was  the  companion  whom  Victor 


Tlffi   ACCIDENT   AT  VILLEQUIER. 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


151 


Hugo  ever  cherished  with  the  utmost  tender- 
ness. She  performed  her  duties  as  a  hostess 
with  infinite  grace,  and  her  salon  was  filled 
with  celebrities  like  Lamartine,  who  would 
write  verses  in  her  album,  and  with  accom- 
plished women  like  Madame  de  Girardin. 


late  it  might  be,  Victor  Hugo  made  it  a  rule 
to  go  out  for  a  stroll  by  himself;  and,  armed 
with  nothing  but  a  cane,  would  cross  the 
Champs  Elysees  and  wander  as  far  as  the 
Arc  de  Triomphe.  This  was  his  favorite 
hour  for  work,  and  he  has  himself  informed 


AN   ATTACK. 


Visitors   flocked  daily  to  the  hospitable 
•dwelling,  attracted  both  by  the  fascinations 


joyousness  of  the  poet. 

After  his  guests  had  departed,  however 


us  that  some  of  his  finest  thoughts  have 
come  to  him  more  readily  in  the  midnight 
hours  of  the  silent  streets,  and  in  the  shadow 
of  the  trees  that  line  the  pathways,  than  in 
the  solitude  of  his  study. 


152 


VICTOR  HUGO  AM)  HIS   TIME. 


He  continued  this  practice  for  a  lonir  time 
without  any  interruption.  Once,  however, 
an  accident  befell  him  when  he  stumbled  over 
a  pile  of  chairs  that  had  been  left  in  the  ave- 
nue, and  over  which  he  had  to  clamber;  and 
once  he  met  with  an  adventure  of  a  more 
startling  character.  As  he  was  sauntering 
along  near  the  Rue  des  Tourncllcs,  he  was 
attacked  and  knocked  down  by  some  pick- 
pockets who  were  waiting  at  the  corner  of 
the  street,  and  he  would  cert:iinly  have  been 
robbed  if  some  passers-by  had  not  disturbed 
the  ruffians,  and  made  them  take  to  their 


heels.  The  poet  immediately  regained  his 
feet,  aud,  running  after  the  thieves,  cane  in 
hand,  called  out  "  Help!  help!"  but  in  so  low 
a  tone  that  it  was  plain  he  did  not  want  the 
rascals  to  be  caught. 

The  attack  had  not  the  least  effect  in  making 
him  discontinue  his  wanderings  in  the  dark. 
He  rarely  referred  to  the  incident;  and,  al- 
though he  has  since  had  to  contend  with 
bandits  of  another  sort,  he  has  never  ceased 
to  regard  Paris  as  the  securest  of  all  the 
cities  of  the  world,  so  long  as  those  who  con- 
coct coups  d'etat  are  not  lurking  in  ambush. 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS  TIME. 


153 


CHAPTER   XX. 

Victor  Hugo's  Politics  during  the  Reign  of  Louis  Philippe.  —  His  Convictions  in  1830.  —  Revolutionary  Sen- 
timents. —  Literary  Liberty  followed  by  Political  Liberty.— Connection  with  the  Press Relations  with 

the  King.— Portrait  of  Louis  Philippe.— Raised  to  the  Peerage.— First  Speeches  in  the  Chamber.— Prel- 
udes to  the  Revolution  of  1848. 


IT  was  the  avowal  of  an  honest  and  illus- 
trious writer,  "I  have  never  passed  a  day 
without  correcting  some  fault;"  and  it  was 
almost  an  echo  of  this  which  Victor  Hugo 
spoke  when  he  represented  himself  as  a  son 
of  this  century,  and,  alluding  to  his  own  mod- 
ified sentiments,  said, 

"  At  its  own  folly  startled,  year  by  year, 
Some  error  from  my  wakened  soul  gets  clear  !" 

He  is  ever  ready  to  own  that  he  has  made 
political  mistakes,  but  is  quite  prepared  for 
his  whole  life  to  be  thrown  open  to  the  in- 
spection of  his  contemporaries.  His  early 
education  had  the  effect  with  him,  as  with 
many  others  at  the  beginning  of  the  century, 
of  introducing  an  apparent  inconsistency  into 
his  principles.  He  was  illogical,  yet  upright ; 
a  legitimist  and  yet  a  Voltairian,  a  Bonapart- 
ist  and  yet  a  liberal.  He  was  a  socialist  grop- 
ing blindly  about  among  the  things  of  royal- 
ty; but,  amid  all  the  discrepancies  caused  by 
the  struggle  in  his  mind  between  the  doc- 
trines he  had  been  taught  by  his  mother  and 
the  priests,  and  the  doctrines  of  freedom 
which  he  subsequently  grew  to  appreciate, 
he  is  satisfied  that  he  never  wrote  a  line  but 
what  was  designed  to  promote  the  love  of 
that  true  liberty  which  in  philosophy  is  reason, 
in  art  is  aspiration,  and  in  politics  is  right. 

The  briefest  outline  of  the  internal  changes 
of  his  conscience  would  suffice  to  attest  the 
sincerity  of  his  assertions. 

By  1830  it  had  become  impossible  for  him 
to  put  any  confidence  in  the  promises  of  the 
Bourbons,  and  he  was  quite  prepared  to  swear 
allegiance  to  Louis  Philippe.  Nevertheless, 
he  did  not  lose  his  respect  for  the  past,  nor 
could  he  bear  that  the  name  of  Bourbon 
should  be  treated  with  scorn  when  the  gray 
locks  of  the  old  king  had  ceased  to  be  circled 
by  a  crown ;  but  as  his  veneration  could  not 
blind  his  eyes  to  the  faults  that  seemed  insep- 
arable from  the  dynasty,  he  regarded  the 
change  of  government  as  a  true  and  necessary 
step  in  advance. 


Hitherto  he  had  been  "  the  man  of  letters," 
working  revolution  in  the  world  of  literature 
by  his  brilliant  efforts;  the  time  seemed  to 
him  now  come  when  he  was  called  upon 
to  throw  himself  into  political  strife,  and 
he  joined  the  Revolution  of  July  rather  be- 
cause it  appeared  to  satisfy  his  liberal  in- 
stincts than  because  it  roused  him  to  any 
enthusiasm. 

His  honesty  was  evident;  for,  however  di- 
vergent may  have  been  the  apparent  lines  of 
principle  he  followed,  it  is  incontestable  that 
he  ever  kept  one  law,  one  aim,  in  view.  Louis 
Blanc  is  correct  in  asserting  that  the  unity  of 
his  life  has  been  his  one  constant  advance 
towards  "the  good,"  and  his  one  determined 
ascent  towards  ' '  the  right ;"  and  M.  Spuller 
is  equally  correct  when,  in  his  recent  eulo- 
gium,  he  pronounces  that  the  three  French 
poetical  geniuses  of  the  nineteenth  century — 
Chateaubriand,  Lamartine,  and  Hugo  —  all 
born  outside  the  pale  of  the  Revolution, 
proved  the  very  men  to  come  forward  to 
serve  and  glorify  the  democracy ;  and  he  im- 
plies that  Victor  Hugo  is  the  greatest  of  them 
all,  as  having  defended  the  social  truths  that 
will  be  the  law  of  future  society. 

Hitherto,  however,  Victor  Hugo  had  never 
believed  that  the  formation  of  a  republic  was 
practicable.  At  that  time  he  could  write  in 
his  ' '  Journal  de  ses  Idees  et  de  ses  Opinions 
Revolutionnaires  "  such  sentiments  as  these: 

"What  we  want  is  a  republican  govern- 
ment under  the  name  of  a  monarchy. " 

"To-day  is  for  kings,  to-morrow  for  the 
people." 

"  Some  people  think  that  a  republic  means 
a  warfare  waged  by  those  who  have  neither 
brains,  money,  nor  virtue,  against  those  who 
have  all  or  any  of  the  three." 

"Of  that  republic  not  yet  matured,  but 
which  all  Europe  is  destined  to  see  a  century 
hence,  my  own  idea  is  that  of  society  gov- 
erned by  society  itself:  a  national  guard  for 
its  defence;  a  jury  for  its  judge;  a  commune 


1.U 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS  TIME. 


for  its  administration:  an  electoral  college  for 
its  government." 

"In  such  a  republic  the  four  appurte- 
nances of  a  monarchy — the  army,  the  magis- 
tracy, the  cabinet,  and  the  peerage  —  will  be 
excrescences  that  will  speedily  wither  and 
die  away." 

"  The  electoral  law  will  be  complete  when 
its  Article  I.  shall  be  —  Every  Frenchman  is 
an  elector;  and  its  Article  II. — Every  French- 
man is  eligible." 

"  Revolution  is  the  embryo  of  civilization." 

Such  pronounced  sentiments  were  alto- 
gether in  advance  of  public  opinion.  At  that 
time  the  citizen-king,  in  the  eyes  of  the  ma- 
jority of  the  people,  represented  the  best  of 
republics;  the  republicans,  themselves  with- 
out power  or  organization, regarding  the  new- 
ly established  monarchy  as  a  dawn  in  which 
nothing  was  wanting,  "  not  even  the  cock." 

With  age  and  experience  Victor  Hugo's 
old  royalist  and  Catholic  prepossessions  crum- 
bled away  piecemeal;  and,  according  to  his 
own  showing,  if  any  fragment  of  them  sur- 
vived in  his  mind,  it  was  only  like  a  ruin  at 
which  he  might  gaze  with  veneration,  but  at 
which  he  could  never  again  pour  forth  his 
devotion.  He  deems  it  a  poor  compliment 
to  a  man  to  say  that  he  has  not  modified  his 
political  opinions  for  forty  years.  It  is  to 
his  view  equivalent  to  asserting  that  he  has 
had  no  experience  and  gained  no  fresh  power 
of  thought;  like  praising  water  for  being 
stagnant,  or  a  tree  for  being  dead;  it  is  like 
preferring  an  oyster  to  an  eagle.  All  opinion 
is  liable  to  variation,  and  nothing  should  be 
absolute  in  politics  except  their  morality. 
Movement  belongs  to  vitality,  and  the  politi- 
cal creed  of  a  man  may  change  without  dis- 
honor to  himself,  so  long  as  his  conscience 
remains  uncorrupt  and  his  convictions  are 
not  subordinate  to  his  interests. 

The  formation  of  Victor  Hugo's  character 
is  all  the  more  laudable  because  he  had  made 
every  step  of  his  progress  only  by  a  resolute 
struggle  with  himself,  never  ceasing  to  per- 
severe in  comprehending  what  is  right,  and 
never  flinching  from  the  greatest  sacrifices  in 
order  to  attain  to  what  is  true. 

There  are  those  who  have  said  of  Victor 
Hugo,  "  He  is  the  greatest  of  poets,  but  noth- 
ing in  politics ; "  but  they  speak  either  ma- 
liciously, lacking  his  integrity,  or  else  ig- 
norantly,  lacking  his  foresight.  There  are 
those  likewise  who  reproach  him  for  his 
fickleness;  such,  however,  for  the  most  part, 
have  been  the  creatures  of  Louis  Philippe, 


who  afterwards  ki»rd  the  hand  of  the  em- 
peror, accepting  offices  and  honors  from 
••  i he  man  of  December,"  while  the  object  of 
their  revilings,  in  vindication  of  his  honesty, 
has  stood  alone  and  made  his  protest  jiuain-t 
violated  law  and  outraged  justice. 

And  now,  after  1830,  lie  beeaine  the  reflex 
of  the  popular  mind.  Like  the  people,  he 
seemed  to  hesitate,  sharing  their  shifting  emo- 
tions during  the  troublous  reign  of  Louis  Phi- 
lippe. Cheeked  in  her  aspirations,  France 
seemed  hardly  to  realize  whether  she  was  un- 
der a  monarchy  or  a  republic,  and  honest 
minds  were  led  away  to  confound  liberalism 
with  Bonapartism,  and  to  regard  progress 
with  a  kind  of  suspicion;  but  Victor  Hugo 
saw  farther  than  the  people.  Brought  face 
to  face  with  the  general  agitation  and  with 
the  rebellious  spirits  that  were  harassing  the 
heart  of  society,  he  felt  it  his  duty  to  fling 
himself  into  the  conflict : 

"Nought,  nonght  but  shame 
To  thinkers  who  their  members  maim, 
And  who  themselves  will  mutilate 
Sighiug  to  leave  the  city  gute  P 

He  asked  himself  what  a  government  born 
of  a  population  in  revolt  was  likely  to  effect ; 
and  in  1832,  after  one  of  the  insurrections  so 
common  at  the  time,  when  Paris  was  put  into 
a  state  of  siege,  in  which  bloodshed  appeared 
imminent,  and  the  National  published  a  pro- 
test to  which  signatures  might  be  appended, 
he  requested  that  his  own  name  might  be 
added  to  the  list. 

In  writing  to  one  of  his  friends,  he  said, 
"  I  trust  that  they  will  not  venture  to  sprin- 
kle the  walls  of  Grenelle  with  young  brains, 
which,  though  hasty,  were  yet  generous.  If 
the  guardians  of  public  order  should  resolve 
upon  a  political  execution,  and  if  four  brave 
men  would  rise  up  to  rescue  the  victims,  I 
would  join  them  as  a  fifth.  .  .  .  Some  day 
we  shall  have  a  republic,  and  it  will  be  a  good 
one.  But  we  must  not  gather  in  May  the 
fruit  which  will  only  be  ripe  in  August.  We 
must  learn  to  be  patient,  and  the  republic 
proclaimed  by  France  Avill  be  the  crown  of 
our  hoary  heads." 

Thus  already,  notwithstanding  the  conflict- 
ing sentiments  that  were  agitating  his  mind, 
the  Victor  Hugo  of  Guernsey  and  Jersey  can 
be  discerned,  and  already  "  the  tribune  is  ap- 
pearing from  beneath  the  dreamer."  No 
sooner  did  he  make  the  open  avowal  that  he 
deemed  it  unworthy  of  himself  to  take  no  in- 
terest in  public  questions  than  the  newspa- 
pers sought  his  co-operation;  and  Emile  de 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


155 


Girardin,  on  starting  La  Presse,  a 'journal  des- 
tined to  exercise  a  considerable  influence 
upon  public  opinion,  was  extremely  anxious 
to  have  Victor  Hugo  for  its  sponsor.  The 
poet  accordingly  drew  up  the  prospectus,  in- 
troducing a  passage  to  this  effect : 

' '  Let  us  endeavor  to  rally  men  of  the  high- 
est gifts  and  the  highest  spirit  round  the  idea 
of  progress,  so  as  to  form  a  superior  party 
qualified  to  represent  the  civilization  of  those 
who  hardly  fathom  their  own  desires." 

It  was  an  elevating  design,  the  formation 
of  such  a  party  being  ever  the  dream  of 
upright  men,  weary  of  revolutions  and  reac- 
tion. 

The  prefaces  to  the  various  volumes  of 
Yictor  Hugo's  poetry  during  the  early  days 
of  constitutional  monarchy  exhibit  to  how 
large  an  extent  politics  all  along  had  been 
occupying  his  thoughts.  In  1831,  when  ' '  Les 
Feuilles  d'Automne "  appeared,  he  consid- 
ered revolutions  as  changes  fraught  with  glo- 
rious issues  for  time  and  for  humanity.  In 
the  preface  to  "Marion  Delorme  "  he  states 
that  the  shock  produced  by  the  Revolution 
of  July  was  an  effort  for  freedom  that  was  a 
necessity  for  art ;  while  in  the  preface  to 
' '  Les  Rayons  et  les  Ombres  "  he  expresses  his 
-desire  that  no  ill-feeling  towards  the  king 
may  intrude  itself  into  his  affection  for  the 
people ;  and  in  the  introduction  to  the  ' '  Con- 
templations "  he  describes  himself  as  a  spirit 
proceeding  from  light  to  light,  after  having 
passed  through  visions  of  tumult,  trouble, 
and  strife. 

Step  by  step  the  change  is  effected ;  study 
and  meditation  bring  it  about  that  he  beholds 
a  republic  diffusing  its  glory  over  the  future, 
and  to  an  old  friend  who  was  wont  to  deplore 
his  altered  views  he  gives  his  own  account  of 
his  conversion : 

"  Must  I  still  wear  the  chain  of  ignorance,  forsooth, 
Because  a  narrow  teaching  trained  my  early  youth  ? 
Because  La  Vendee  once  obscured  La  France,  must  I 
*Get  thee  behind  me'  to  the  dawning  spirit  cry? 
Must  I  go  on  forever  Breton's  fame  to  raise, 
•Choman,  not  Marceau,   Stofflet    and  not  Dauton 

praise  ? 

Because  of  old  the  royalist  song  I  joyed  to  chant, 
Must  I,  unwise,  to  freedom's  progress  cry  Avauntf 
Nay,  nay  ;  no  longer  cloistered  in  a  narrow  cell, 
To  wider,  nobler  scope   my  soul's  true  instincts 

swell." 

The  modification  of  his  political  creed  was 
so  natural  and  so  honest  that  it  need  not  be 
any  further  illustrated.  Like  many  of  his 
contemporaries,  he  groped  his  way. slowly 
but  surely  towards  the  light,  and  he  may 


justly  feel  proud  of  the  course  that  he  has 
taken. 

It  was  not  long  before  he  came  to  be  on 
almost  intimate  terms  with  Louis  Philippe. 
The  king,  who  at  first  had  only  admired  him 
as  a  writer,  grew  to  be  much  interested  in 
him  personally.  Victor  Hugo's  opinion  of 
the  king  is  given  at  length  in  a  striking  chap- 
ter of  "Les  Miserables,"  in  which  he  has 
borne  favorable  testimony  to  the  ruler  of 
whose  throne  he  did  not  approve,  but  of  whose 
kindness  he  was  the  recipient.  He  has  been 
discriminating  and  just  in  his  judgment,  with- 
out manifesting  either  contempt  or  partiality, 
dealing  fairly  with  him  as  a  sovereign,  and 
leniently  with  him  as  a  man. 

Others  have  been  much  more  severe,  ex- 
pressing their  regret,  with  some  show  of  rea- 
son, that  Louis  Philippe  did  not  make  an  effort 
to  organize  the  democracy,  and  contending 
that  he  neither  understood  nor  cared  for  the 
laboring  classes. 

According  to  Daniel  Stern  (Madame 
d'Agoult),  who  wrote  one  of  the  best  histo- 
ries of  the  Revolution  of  1848,  it  was  his  aim 
to  keep  a  high-minded  nation  down  to  the 
level  of  an  upstart  bourgeoisie,  which,  in  its 
narrow-minded  egotism,  furnished  him  with 
the  type,  and  almost,  it  might  be  said,  with 
the  material,  for  his  government. 

So  far,  however,  was  he  from  entertaining 
any  real  regard  for  the  bourgeoisie  which  he 
was  endeavoring  to  conciliate,  that  he  did 
his  utmost  to  enslave  and  debase  it.  To 
grow  rich  became  the  corrupt  ambition  of 
the  middle-class,  and  it  was  precisely  in  con- 
sequence of  this  that  in  the  hour  of  his  mis- 
fortunes there  was  no  manifestation  of  de- 
voted courage  or  generous  disinterestedness 
on  his  behalf.  When  the  democracy  awoke 
to  power,  those  whom  he  thought  he  had 
made  subservient  to  himself  abandoned  him 
with  utter  indifference. 

In  literature,  as  in  everything  else,  Louis 
Philippe  was  a  sceptic,  and  for  art  had  no 
shadow  of  genuine  care.  Upon  this  point 
the  opposition  journals  left  him  no  peace, 
and  it  was  by  way  of  making  some  gracious 
advances  towards  the  poets  that,  upon  the 
marriage  of  the  Due  d'Orleans,  Victor  Hugo 
was  invited  to  attend  the  festivities  at  Ver- 
sailles. The  invitation  was  at  first  declined; 
but  the  bridegroom,  at  the  instigation,  it  is 
aid,  of  his  young  bride,  again  sent  him  so 
pressing  a  message  that  he  was  induced  to  re- 
consider his  determination.  He  went  to  Ver- 
sailles, and  was  introduced  to  the  duchess, 


156 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  7//.V   TJ.Mi:. 


•who  received  the  author  of  "Notre  Dame  de 
Paris  "  with  the  graceful  compliment, 

"  The  first  building,  monsieur,  that  I  visited 
on  coming  to  Paris  was  //<*///•  church." 

This  introduction,  which  took  place  in 
June,  1837,  was  the  prelude  to  numerous  in- 
terviews between  the  king  and  Victor  Hugo. 

After  having  thoroughly  determined  to  de- 
vote himself  to  politics,  he  began  to  entertain 
the  idea  of  getting  returned  for  the  Chamber 
of  Deputies,  notwithstanding  the  difficulties 
that  lay  in  the  way  of  his  eligibility.  In  this 
project  he  was  promised  every  possible  assist 
anceby  Paul  Meurice's  brother  Fromeut.  This 
talented  artist  was  the  restorer  of  an  art  that 
had  fallen  into  decay;  and  many  of  his  cas- 
kets, vases,  ewers,  and  swords  are  master- 
pieces of  their  kind.  His  occupation  as  a 
goldsmith  and  jeweller  gave  him  a  very  con- 
siderable influence  in  the  city,  which  he  was 
quite  prepared  to  place  at  the  disposal  of  the 
new  candidate;  but  the  elections  were  post- 
poned, and  the  design  was  abandoned. 

His  admission  to  the  Academy  afterwards 
gave  him  the  requisite  qualification  for  being 
nominated  to  the  peerage,  though  he  had  the 
prospect  in  his  early  days  of  deriving  a  title 
in  two  separate  ways,  as  two  of  his  mother's 
cousins — M.  de  Chasseboeuf  (Voluey)  and  M. 
Cornet — had  been  peers  of  France.  There  is 
no  doubt  that  M.  de  Chassebanif  would  have 
gladly  left  his  title  to  his  young  kinsman  if 
he  had  not  considered  his  political  views  too 
advanced.  M.  Cornet,  moreover,  had  actually 
decided  upon  making  him  his  heir;  but  his 
mother,  Madame  Hugo,  had  protested  against 
his  consenting  to  add  the  name  of  Cornet  to 
his  own,  declaring  that  "Hugo-Cornet"  was 
too  ridiculous  to  be  tolerated. 

Thus  practically  precluded  from  acquiring 
a  title  by  inheritance,  the  poet  found  another 
avenue  to  the  Chamber.  Discovering,  al- 
though somewhat  tardily,  that  the  brilliant 
intellect  of  Victor  Hugo  might  be  made  ser- 
viceable to  him,  Louis  Philippe  invited  him 
to  come  and  see  him,  and  the  visits  gradually 
became  more  and  more  frequent.  On  one  of 
these  occasions  the  king,  always  remarkable 
for  conversational  power,  found  his  visitor's 
society  so  agreeable  that  he  forgot  all  about 
the  hour;  and  the  servants  in  the  Tuileries, 
imagining  that  their  master  had  retired  to 
rest  as  usual,  put  out  all  the  lights  and  went 
to  bed.  When  at  last  the  guest  rose  to  take 
his  leave,  Louis  Philippe,  discovering  what 
had  happened,  took  up  one  of  the  large  can- 
delabra from  the  table  of  the  room  where  he 


was  sitting,  and  escorted  the  poet  down  the 
staircase,  staying  to  talk  with  him  a  consid- 
erable time  longer  in  the  hall. 

Victor  Hugo  had  always  a  great  facility  of 
speech.  His  phraseology  is  easy,  fluent,  and 
intelligent.  His  marvellous  memory,  his  pow- 
er of  imagination,  and  vivacity  combine  to 
make  his  conversation  unusually  attractive; 
and  he  has  the  rare  faculty  of  being  aide  to 
introduce  into  what  he  says  the  striking  an- 
tithe.sis  which  is  so  characteristic  a  feature  in 
his  writings.  There  are  not  a  few  authors 
who  only  have  control  over  their  thoughts 
while  they  are  sitting  at  their  writing  <l<-k; 
with  him  it  was  always  the  case  that  he  could 
bring  his  ideas  at  once  to  bear,  and  could 
clothe  them  with  the  attraction  of  personal 
kindness.  This  accounts  for  his  success  with 
Louis  Philippe,  who,  though  perpetually  re- 
proached with  setting  no  value  on  poets  until 
they  became  politicians,  certainly  professed  a 
high  regard  for  him. 

More  and  more  the  salon  in  the  Place  Roy- 
ale  became  transformed  into  a  political  ren- 
dezvous, and  on  the  13th  of  April,  1845,  Vic- 
tor Hugo  was  made  a  French  peer.  The 
choice  was  hailed  with  much  satisfaction  by 
the  general  public,  and  only  a  few  republi- 
cans, who  were  by  no  means  content  with 
the  liberalism  of  the  Chamber,  manifested 
any  discontent.  One  anonymous  satirist 
launched  forth  at  him  a  series  of  little  verses, 
of  which  the  wit  was  supposed  to  reside  in 
their  being  published  to  represent  the  tail  of 
a  congreve  rocket: 

"Grand,    petit 

Tout     f  i  i)  i  t, 

Loi  supreme! 

Hugo  me  in e 

La   s u  b  i  t, 

Vivace 

II    passe 

Pair !" 

Victor  Hugo,  however,  now  republican  in 
heart,  and  who  had  done  so  much  to  break 
down  the  old  literary  regime,  had  but  little 
affection  for  the  peerage,  which  he  rcganled 
as  the  remnant  of  an  antiquated  political 
system.  Nevertheless,  it  was  the  only  chan- 
nel that  seemed  open  to  him  by  which  he 
could  associate  himself  with  political  trans- 
actions, and  by  accepting  the  dignity  he  no 
more  compromised  his  conscience  than  did 
the  democrats  who  swore  allegiance  to  the 
Empire,  because  it  was  their  only  means  of 
defending  the  rights  of  the  democracy. 

Some  idea  may  be  formed  of  the  venerable 
age  of  the  French  peers  at  that  time  when 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  LOUIS  PHILIPPE. 


158 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


it  is  recorded  that  the  new  statesman  took 
his  place  by  the  side  of  the  Vicomte  de 
Pontecoulant,  who  had  voted  for  the  death 
of  Louis  XVI.  In  front  of  him  sat  Soult, 
who  had  been  a  marechal  since  1802;  while 
the  president  was  Due  Pasquier,  who,  as  a 
young  councillor,  had  passed  sentence  on 
Beaumarchais,  who  died  in  1799. 

At  first  the  newly  created  peer  professed 
himself  an  independent  conservative;  and, 
while  he  did  all  the  justice  he  could  to  the 
monarch  who  from  the  throne  promulgated 
words  of  universal  peace,  he  refused  to  be 
subservient  to  the  policy  of  his  ministers. 

He  mounted  the  tribune  for  the  first  time 
on  the  18th  of  February,  1846,  when,  after 
his  two  rivals,  Lamartiue  and  Chateaubriand, 
had  been  making  some  powerful  speeches, 
he  made  a  vigorous  defence  of  artists  and 
their  copyright.  On  the  10th  of  the  follow- 
ing month  he  delivered  his  first  political  ha- 
rangue, on  the  subject  of  Poland. 

M.  Guizot  had  avowed  his  conviction  that 
France  could  do  nothing  towards  re-estab- 
lishing the  Polish  nationality.  Victor  Hugo 
unhesitatingly  denounced  so  selfish  a  policy; 
he  maintained  that  it  was  not  a  material  but 
a  moral  intervention  that  was  required,  and 
that  such  intervention  ought  to  be  made  in 
the  name  of  European  civilization,  of  which 
the  French  were  the  missionaries  and  the 
Poles  the  champions;  he  reminded  his  audi- 
ence how  Sobieski  had  been  to  Poland  what 
Leonidas  had  been  to  Greece,  and  he  claimed 
the  gratitude  and  moral  support  of  France 
for  a  people  who  had  done  their  part  in  the 
noble  defence  of  freedom. 

He  might  as  well  have  spoken  to  the  winds. 
To  assert  in  the  French  Chamber  of  Peers 
that  the  oppression  of  a  people  is  an  offence 
against  law  or  justice  was  a  sort  of  heresy. 
His  speech  was  very  coldly  received. 

His  next  effort  was  to  consolidate  some 
measures  for  the  protection  of  the  coast,  and 
he  entered  into  many  technical  details,  and 
gave  much  practical  advice. 

In  June,  1847,  he  supported  the  petition  of 
Prince  Jerome  Napoleon  Bonaparte,  request- 
ing that  his  family  might  be  permitted  to  re- 
turn to  France.  In  his  speech  he  exhorted 
the  Chamber  to  be  magnanimous,  and  to  evi- 
dence its  strength  by  its  generosity ;  he  pro- 
nounced it  to  be  repugnant  to  his  feelings 
that  any  countryman  of  his  should  be  an 
exile  or  an  outlaw,  and  he  asserted  that  it 
was  impossible  for  any  pretender  to  be  other- 
wise than  harmless  in  the  midst  of  a  nation 


where  there  was  freedom  of  work  and  free- 
dom of  thought;  in  mercifulness  they  would 
establish  their  power. 

On  the  evening  of  the  same  day  on  which 
this  appeal  had  been  urged,  Louis  Philippe, 
after  reading  the  speech,  informed  MunVhal 
Soult,  the  president  of  his  council,  that  he 
had  come  to  the  conclusion  to  allow  the 
Bonapartes  to  return  to  the  country. 

Early  in  1848  Victor  Hugo  made  an  ora- 
tion in  favor  of  Italian  unity.  The  Pope, 
Pius  IX.,  was  at  that  time  regarded  as  a 
revolutionist  in  many  quarters,  in  conse- 
quence of  certain  prospects  of  liberty  which 
he  was  holding  out,  although  he  afterwards 
falsified  them  all  by  his  Syllabus;  and,  in 
spite  of  vehement  opposition,  Victor  Hugo 
took  up  the  matter,  and  pleaded  for  the  uni- 
fication of  the  Italian  government. 

However  much  all  these  parliamentary 
struggles  occupied  his  energies,  they  did  not 
prevent  him  either  from  continuing  his  po- 
etical labors,  or  from  exercising  a  powerful 
influence  upon  literature  generally.  Nor  did 
he  neglect  his  friends;  for  about  this  time  he 
obtained  the  dramatic  editorship  of  L'£poque 
for  Auguste  Vacquerie, whose  talents  he  just- 
ly appreciated. 

Simultaneously  with  Lamartine  he  notified 
his  adhesion  to  Louis  Blanc,  who  was  then 
about  to  start  the  Revue  du  Progrh,  and  he 
wrote  to  him  to  say  that  the  next  great  work 
to  be  effected  was  the  peaceful,  gradual,  and 
logical  formation  of  a  social  order,  in  which 
the  principles  newly  evolved  by  the  Revolu- 
tion should  be  combined  with  the  ancient 
and  eternal  principles  of  all  true  civilization, 
the  basis  of  the  order  being  that  social  ques- 
tions should  be  substituted  for  political. 

Already  he  had  warned  the  ruling  powers 
that  they  must  bestow  a  more  active  atten- 
tion upon  the  masses  of  the  people,  who  were 
so  courageous,  intelligent,  and  patriotic;  al- 
ready he  had  set  forward  the  consequences 
of  the  government  of  July;  he  saw  how  con- 
science was  becoming  debased,  corruption 
was  on  the  increase,  and  that  the  highest 
offices  were  being  beset  with  the  basest  of 
passions.  All  this  filled  him  with  profound 
regret. 

If  Louis  Philippe's  government  had  only 
been  true  to  its  promises,  upholding  liberty 
and  devoting  itself  to  the  solution  of  social 
difficulties,  there  can  hardly  be  a  doubt  that 
the  great  poet,  overflowing  with  benevolence, 
would  have  remained  a  social  philosopher, 
content  to  be  watchful,  and  suggesting  coun- 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS  TIME. 


159 


sels  of  philanthropy;  but  when  the  errors  of 
that  government  drove  the  people  into  insur- 
rection, and  the  tempest  arose  that  swept 
away  the  throne,  Victor  Hugo  was  impelled 
into  more  decided  action.  At  first,  mindful 
of  his  oath  of  allegiance,  he  proposed  that 
the  Duchess  of  Orleans  should  be  declared 


regent;  but  subsequently,  carried  along  with 
the  current  of  the  time,  he  gave  his  assent  to 
the  Republic,  which  he  has  defined  as  being 
a  "social  majesty,"  and  which,  as  our  an- 
cestors have  beheld  it  great  and  terrible  in 
the  past,  he  hoped  that  posterity  would  be- 
hold grand  and  beneficent  in  the  future. 


160 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  UIS  TIME. 


CHAPTER   XXT. 

Elections  for  the  Constituent  Assembly.— Address  to  the  Electors.— Speeches  in  the  Assembly.— Socialist 
Opinions. —Opinion  on  the  Events  of  Jane — Republican  Convictions. —Pardon  to  the  Vanquished.— 
Rescue  of  Insurgents.— Victor  Schcelcher.— Independent  Votes.  —Publication  of  L' Bvttument.— Prospectus 
of  the  Paper.— Dissolution  of  Constituent  Assembly.— The  Legislative  Assembly.— Bonaparte  President. 
—A  Trilogy.— The  Coup  d'£tat. 


As  Victor  Hugo  has  himself  acknowledged . 
he  had  some  hesitation,  in  1848,  in  deciding 
what  line  he  should  follow.  For  the  time,  he 
says,  liberty  liti  IIHIK^IKI  Id  It>'/>i//ilique;  it 
closed  his  eyes  for  the  present  to  the  form  of 
government  which  he  was  ultimately  to  sup- 
port so  ardently. 

In  the  month  of  March  some  electors  wrote 
to  him,  proposing  that  he  should  become  a 
candidate  for  the  National  Assembly.  He 
replied  that  he  was  at  the  service  of  his 
country;  his  antecedents  were  well  known; 
he  had  written  thirty-two  books  and  eight 
dramas;  his  speeches  could  all  be  read  in  Le 
Moniteur,  and  consequently  the  world  was 
capable  of  judging  whether  he  was  suited 
for  a  political  career. 

In  accordance  with  the  new  electoral  law, 
which  was  the  basis  of  universal  suffrage, 
and  the  most  democratic  that  had  hitherto 
been  carried  anywhere,  the  elections  were 
fixed  by  the  Provisional  Government  for  the 
23d  of  April. 

The  first  name  drawn  from  the  urn  was 
that  of  Lamartine,  with  259,800  votes;  it  was 
followed  by  the  names  of  Dupont  (de  1'Eure), 
Arago,  Garnier-Pag£s,  Armand  Marast,  Marie, 
and  Cremieux.  Victor  Hugo  was  not  elect- 
ed; he  was  forty-eighth  in  the  Paris  list,  with 
59,446  votes ;  Barbes  and  Lacordaire,-  who 
also  were  not  elected,  having  a  few  more 
votes ;  General  Changarnier,  Raspail,  and 
Pierre  Leroux  having  polled  a  few  less. 

Within  six  weeks,  in  consequence  either 
of  the  retirement  of  some,  candidates  or  of 
the  double  election  of  others,  Paris  had  to 
elect  eleven  new  representatives;  and  in  re- 
sponse to  the  solicitation  of  60,000  electors, 
Victor  Hugo  again  came  forward. 

He  expounded  his  views  in  a  telling  speech, 
delivered  shortly  before  the  election  at  a 
meeting  of  the  five  associations  of  art  and 
industry ;  he  was  much  applauded,  and  on 
the  day  of  election  received  86,965  votes,  his 
name  as  a  successful  candidate  appearing, 


by  a  strange  coincidence,  between  those  of 
Pierre  Leroux  and  Louis  Napoleon  Bona- 
parte. Caussidiere,  General  Changarnier, 
Tliiors,  and  Proudhon  were  elected  at  the 
same  time. 

Not  immediately  on  his  election  did  he  de- 
cide what  part  to  take  in  the  Assembly.  With 
his  personal  freedom  from  ambition  and  prej- 
udice, on  being  first  called  to  take  a  part  in 
the  administration  of  public  affairs,  he  did 
not  draw  any  definite  line  of  action,  but  con- 
tented himself  by  voting  independently,  ac- 
cording to  his  conscience,  now  with  the  Right 
and  now  with  the  Left,  without  identifying 
himself  with  any  section. 

His  first  speech  was  made  on  the  20th  of 
June,  when  he  took  part  in  the  debate  upon 
the  national  factories.  These  had  now  been 
in  operation  for  four  months.and  had  brought 
about  none  but  deplorable  results.  Admit- 
ting the  necessity  which  might  seem  to  justify 
their  establishment,  he  insisted  that  practi- 
cally they  had  had  a  most  disastrous  influ- 
ence upon  business,  and  pointed  out  the  seri- 
ous danger  which  they  threatened,  not  alone 
to  the  finances  but  to  the  population  of  Paris. 
As  a  socialist  he  addressed  himself  to  social- 
ists, and  invoked  them  to  labor  in  behalf  of 
the  perishing,  but  to  labor  without  causing 
alarm  to  the  world  at  large ;  he  implored 
them  to  bestow  upon  the  disendowed  classes, 
as  they  were  called,  all  the  benefits  of  civili- 
zation, to  provide  them  with  education,  with 
the  means  of  cheap  living  ;  and,  in  short,  to 
put  them  in  the  way  of  accumulating  wealth 
instead  of  multiplying  misery.  In  conclu- 
sion, he  recommended  patience  alike  towards 
the  people  themselves  and  towards  those  who 
were  desirous  of  ameliorating  their  condi- 
tion. 

It  was  a  speech  that  betokened  a  rupture 
with  the  reactionary  party.  The  noble  senti 
ments  that  he  uttered  found  an  echo,  and 
thenceforward  Victor  Hugo's  pleading  of  the 
cause  of  the  degraded  and  oppressed  earned 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


161 


him  the  gratitude  and  gained  him  the  love 
of  those  whose  welfare  he  desired. 

Yet,  as  a  representative,  he  allied  himself 
with  the  guardians  of  the  public  peace.  He 
was  anxious,  above  all  things,  to  prevent  blood- 
shed. He  went  from  barricade  to  barricade, 
entreating  the  insurgents,  and  bidding  them, 
in  the  name  of  the  National  Assembly,  to  lay 
down  their  arms;  at  the  risk  of  his  life  he 
forced  his  way  where  the  uproar  was  loudest 
— into  the  Rue  St.  Louis  and  the  Rue  Vieille 
du  Temple.  But  effort  was  in  vain.  Noth- 
ing could  avert  the  tragedy  of  the  three  days 
of  June. 

Was  this  terrible  insurrection  necessary  ? 
Was  it  right  ?  Such  are  the  questions  that 
Victor  Hugo  asked  in  the  beginning  of  the 
book  which  he  entitled  "  Depuis  1'Exil."  And 
in  giving  his  own  reply  he  says  that  he  is 
tempted  to  say  both  Yes  and  No;  "  Yes,"  if 
the  end  to  be  accomplished  by  the  Republic 
is  taken  into  consideration :  ' '  No, "  if  only  the 
means  employed  be  regarded — means  which 
involved  the  fatal  mistake  of  slaying  what  it 
ought  to  save. 

He  goes  on  to  say: 

"  The  insurrection  of  June  took  a  mistaken 
course;  but,  alas!  the  very  thing  that  espe- 
cially made  it  terrible  was  that  it  demanded 
respect.  It  was  the  outcome  of  a  people's 
despair.  The  first  duty  of  the  Republic  was 
to  suppress  the  revolt ;  the  next  was  to  pardon 
it.  The  National  Assembly  met  the  former 
obligation,  but  failed  in  the  latter,  and  for  the 
omission  will  be  held  responsible  by  History. " 

We  shall  have  occasion  to  remark  here- 
after how  precisely  similar  to  these  were  the 
sentiments  which  Victor  Hugo  expressed 
about  the  Communist  insurrection  in  1870. 

In  1848  he  was  not  slow  in  putting  his 
theories  into  practice,  by  saving  the  lives  of 
several  of  the  insurgents. 

When  he  returned  to  his  apartments  in  the 
Place  Royale,  he  discovered  that  the  rooms 
had  all  been  ransacked  by  the  rebels,  in  the 
hope  of  finding  arms,  but  that  no  further 
theft  or  mischief  had  been  committed,  and 
he  found  the  house  now  occupied  by  a  troop 
of  the  National  Guard,  who  accused  the  con- 
cierge of  opening  a  back  door  to  the  insur- 
gents, and,  having  made  him  kneel  down 
against  a  wall,  were  about  to  shoot  him  forth- 
with. Victor  Hugo,  with  equal  promptitude 
and  earnestness,  represented  to  the  soldiers 
how  such  retaliation  would  be  of  no  service, 
and  only  sully  their  own  reputation ;  and  the 
man's  life  was  accordingly  spared. 
11 


Others  whom  he  was  the  means  of  rescuing 
from  summary  punishment  were  a  literary 
man  whose  name  we  have  forgotten,  an  ar- 
chitect named  Roland,  Georges  Biscarrat,  the 
nephew  of  his  old  tutor  at  the  Pension  Cor- 
dier,  the  Comte  de  Fouchecourt,  a  legitimist 
who  had  taken  an  active  part  in  the  insurrec- 
tion, and  four  more ;  all  of  whom,  at  the  im- 
minent risk  of  his  personal  safety,  he  con- 
veyed past  the  sentinels  under  the  pretext 
that  they  were  his  own  servants. 

And  he  was  not  content  with  saving  those 
who  thus  casually  came  in  his  way.  At  an 
early  meeting  of  the  Assembly  he  proposed 
that  an  entire  amnesty  should  be  proclaimed. 
Immediately  a  man  fose  and  embraced  him. 

That  man  was  Victor  Schoelcher,  of  whom 
Lamartine  has  said,  ' '  He  has  never  thought 
of  himself  for  an  hour.  Justice  is  in  his  ev- 
ery breath,  sacrifice  in  his  every  movement, 
uprightness  in  his  every  word ;  all  his  thoughts 
lead  upwards  to  what  we  call  heaven;  and 
yet  he  is  a  materialist,  owning  not  the  exist- 
ence of  God.  How  can  such  a  man  evolve 
such  virtue  from  himself?"  He  was  one  of 
the  most  energetic  advocates  for  the  emanci- 
pation of  the  negroes,  and  became  one  of  the 
poet's  most  faithful  friends.  It  was  a  delight 
not  soon  to  be  forgotten  to  hear  them  discuss 
their  sentiments.  Spiritualism  was  the  one 
subject  on  which  they  did  not  agree,  but  in 
spite  of  this  diversity  in  creed  they  were  one 
in  heart ;  in  goodness  they  are  the  same. 

During  Cavaignac's  administration  Victor 
Hugo  did  not  entirely  separate  himself  from 
the  Moderates;  he  repudiated  the  project  of 
taking  proceedings  against  Louis  Blanc  and 
Caussidiere;  he  refused  to  declare  that  Ca- 
vaignac  deserved  the  gratitude  of  his  country ; 
and  he  opposed  the  formation  of  the  consti- 
tution that  was  proposed  on  the  ground  that 
he  approved  of  two  Chambers,  and  held  a 
single  Chamber  to  be  dangerous,  if  not  disas- 
trous. This  opinion  has  been  combated  by 
many  arguments,  but  it  can  hardly  be  ques- 
tioned that  the  existence  of  a  second  Chamber 
at  the  time  would  probably  have  interposed 
an  insuperable  obstacle  to  the  coup  d'etat. 

Victor  Hugo  went  on  to  claim  liberty  for 
the  press,  which  had  been  temporarily  sus- 
pended during  the  state  of  siege.  He  also 
pleaded  for  the  abolition  of  capital  punish- 
ment; and,  in  common  with  a  number  of  his 
colleagues  who  were  not  discerning  enough 
to  anticipate  the  future,  he  opposed  Grevy's 
amendment,  which,  by  suppressing  the  presi- 
dency of  the  Republic,  would  have  rendered 


162 


VICTOR  IWQO  AND  HIS    TIME. 


the  establishment  of  the  Empire  impossi- 
ble. 

It  was  in  his  anxiety  to  use  every  means 
for  the  advancement  of  liberty  that  on  the 
1st  of  April,  1848,  he  started  L" ^tenement,  a 
journal  whose  design  was  declared  by  its 
motto,  "Intense  hatred  to  anarchy,  tender 
love  for  the  people. "  At  first  it  was  proposed 
to  call  this  paper  La  Pensee.  It  is  a  curious 
monument  of  French  journalism.  The  pro- 
spectus, drawn  up  by  the  poet  himself,  thus 
describes  its  intention : 

"This  journal  will  be  a  daily  attack  of  fe- 
ver to  the  nation  in  travail  with  civilization. 
France,  from  her  pangs,  will  soon  bring  forth 
a  constitution,  and  then  more  tranquil  days 
will  dawn.  Constitutions  require  storms  for 
their  birth,  peace  and  quietness  for  their  life. 
The  human  heart  is  even  as  the  soil;  it  re- 
quires first  the  plough  and  afterwards  the 
sun. 

"Our  present  purpose  is  to  secure  work 
and  to  develop  art;  work  to  supply  men's 
bodies  with  sustenance,  art  to  supply  their 
souls  with  nourishment.  We  want  to  banish 
from  the  brightness  of  our  sphere  the  last  fa- 
tal shadows  of  ignorance,  which  makes  the 
night-time  of  the  heart." 

The  contributors  to  the  paper  were  Au- 
guste  Vacquerie,  Paul  Meurice,  Theophile 
Gautier,  the  poet's  two  sons,  Auguste  Vita, 
with  several  others. 

What  has  been  said  about  the  paper  hav- 
ing been  issued  for  Victor  Hugo's  private 
emolument  or  personal  advantage  is  entirely 
false.  Admired  and  respected — nay,  loved — 
by  the  people,  he  had  no  thought  be}rond  the 
people's  benefit.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that 
he  was  actuated  by  the  desire  to  eradicate 
the  prejudice  which  he  deemed  to  be  absurd, 
that  because  a  man  was  a  poet  he  was  there- 
fore incompetent  to  deal  with  human  affairs. 
The  journal,  in  its  enthusiasm,  described  the 
editor  as  "arm  and  head,  steel  and  torch, 
strength  and  gentleness,  conqueror  and  legis- 
lator, king  and  prophet,  lyre  and  sword;" 
above  all,  it  defended  the  cause  of  the  Rev- 
olution. Nevertheless,  its  early  success  was 
changed  into  ultimate  failure. 

On  the  29th  of  January,  in  the  following 
year,  amid  murmurs  of  strong  dissatisfaction 
from  the  Left,  a  motion  was  brought  forward 
that  it  would  be  for  the  public  advantage  if 
the  Constituent  Assembly  were  dissolved  and 
a  Legislative  Assembly  elected  in  its  place. 
The  motion  was  carried,  and  a  dissolution 
ensued. 


Under  the  auspices  of  the  pronounced  rev- 
olutionary party,  Victor  Hugo  came  forward 
as  a  candidate  in  May,  and  was  elected,  his 
name  standing  tenth  on  the  list  of  the  twenty- 
eight  deputies  for  Paris. 

In  the  new  Assembly,  his  attitude  was  no 
longer  one  of  hesitation.  He  had  now  reck- 
oned up  the  requirements  of  the  times,  and 
as  the  truth  revealed  itself  his  perplexities 
vanished.  At  once  and  forever  he  severed 
himself  from  his  former  friends  and  became 
the  niost  powerful  organ  of  the  republican 
party. 

Both  by  word  of  mouth  and  by  his  pen,  he 
has  distinctly  avowed  that  the  year  1849  is 
a  great  era  in  his  life,  as  then  he  first  grasped 
the  problems  that  had  to  be  solved,  and  the 
reforms  that  had  to  be  made.  He  beheld  the 
majority  casting  aside  its  mask  of  hypocrisy, 
and  he  understood  it  all.  "An  inanimate 
body  was  lying  on  the  ground;  he  was  told 
that  that  lifeless  thing  was  the  Republic;  he 
drew  near  and  gazed,  and  lo !  it  was  Liberty ; 
he  bent  over  it  and  raised  it  to  his  bosom. 
Before  him  might  be  ruin,  insult,  banish- 
ment, and  scorn ;  but  he  took  it  unto  him  as 
a  wife!  .  .  .  From  that  moment  there  existed 
within  his  very  soul  the  union  between  Lib- 
erty and  the  Republic.  .  .  .  Such  is  the  his- 
tory of  what  has  been  called  his  apostasy. "  * 

As  the  champion  of  democracy  he  now  be- 
gan to  mount  the  tribune  more  frequently. 
On  the  questions  of  education,  electoral  re- 
form, transportation,  the  protection  of  the 
press,  and  the  reorganization  of  the  Constitu- 
tion, he  was  ever  anxious  to  give  his  opinion ; 
and  his  speeches,  full  of  fire  and  marked  by 
a  captivating  eloquence,  moved  the  Assembly, 
on  the  one  hand,  to  admiration,  and,  on  the 
other,  to  wrath.  For  the  next  three  years 
there  was  a  succession  of  oratorical  contests 
as  brilliant  as  they  were  impassioned. 

In  one  of  the  speeches  which  may  be  reck- 
oned among  his  masterpieces,  Victor  Hugo 
made  the  statement  that  he  held  misery  to  be 
a  thing  that  it  was  quite  possible  to  annihi- 
late. A  storm  of  dissent  immediately  broke 
out  from  the  Right.  M.  Poujoulat  shouted 
that  it  was  "a  downright  fallacy,"  while  M. 
Benoit  d'Azy,  supported  by  the  majority, 
maintained  that  such  a  proposition  was  sim- 
ply ridiculous. 

At  this  period  it  was  that  the  melancholy 
episode  in  Italian  history  occurred  wherein 
Rome  was  entered  by  the  French,  and  the 

•  "  Le  Droit  et  la  Lol.'" 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS  TIME. 


163 


Pope  was  restored  to  the  protection  of  the 
tricolor.  For  a  considerable  time  Victor 
Hugo  had  looked  upon  Pius  IX.  as  a  man  of 
liberal  sentiments ;  but  now  he  declared  that 
the  papacy  was  holding  itself  isolated  from 
the  general  march  of  intellect,  and  failed  to 
comprehend  aright  the  demands  of  the  peo- 
ple and  the  age.  His  denunciation  of  the 
abuses  which  followed  in  the  train  of  eccle- 
siastical domination  called  forth  against  him 
the  invectives  of  M.  Montalembert,  who  re- 
proached him  with  his  treachery,  not  only 
quoting  some  of  his  earlier  verses,  but  jeering 
him  unmercifully  for  having  to  submit  to 
such  a  chastisement  as  the  applause  of  repub- 
licans. 

The  poet's  reply  was  simple  enough: 

"  Call  it  chastisement  if  you  will;  I  regard 
it  as  an  honor.  Other  applause  like  that  of 
the  tormentors  of  Hungary,  or  the  oppressors 
of  Poland,  I  count  not.  Let  those  accept  it 
who  choose.  There  was  a  time — I  regret  to 
have  to  remind  M.  Montalembert  of  it — there 
was  a  time  when  he  employed  his  noble  tal- 
ents better.  He  defended  Poland  as  now  I 
defend  Italy.  I  was  with  him  then;  he  is 
against  n?e  now.  The  explanation  is  not  far 
to  seek.  He  has  gone  over  to  the  side  of  the 
oppressors ;  I  have  remained  on  the  side  of 
the  oppressed." 

The  speech  had  the  effect  of  quieting  M. 
Montalembert ;  but  his  supporters,  men  who 
afterwards  swore  fidelity  to  the  Empire,  kept 
up  their  raillery,  calling  Victor  Hugo  a  sun- 
worshipper,  and  taunting  him  with  his  con- 
version. Once,  when  he  referred  to  the  threat- 
ened dictatorship,  and  ventured  to  speak  of 
the  United  States  of  Europe,  M.  Mole  rose  up 
and  left  the  Assembly  in  indignation,  imagin- 
ing that  he  would  be  followed  by  the  major- 
ity; but,  discovering  that  the  deputies  kept 
their  seats,  he  had  to  return  to  his  place  again 
somewhat  discomfited  and  abashed.  No 
amount  of  uproar,  hisses,  or  laughter  ever 
discomposed  Victor  Hugo.  He  calmly  re- 
clined with  half-closed  eyes  against  the  side 
of  the  tribune,  and  was  always  prepared,  as 
soon  as  the  noise  had  subsided,  gravely  to 
take  up  the  threat  of  his  discourse,  and  to 
vindicate  the  opinions  for  which  he  counted 
no  sacrifice  too  great,  in  defence  of  the  peo- 
ple and  their  rights. 

On  the  21st  of  August,  1849,  the  Peace 
Congress  was  held  in  Paris.  Victor  Hugo 
was  elected  president,  and  Mr.  Cobden  vice- 
Vresident. 

In  his  opening  address  the  poet  offered 


greetings  to  those  who  had  come  from  the 
most  distant  parts  of  the  world,  inspired  by 
one  grand  and  holy  thought.  He  spoke  to 
them  as  men  who  had  met  together  to  work, 
not  for  the  benefit  of  a  single  nation,  but  for 
the  welfare  of  all  nations.  He  addressed  them 
as  a  throng  of  representatives  coming  on  a 
mission  of  mercy,  and  bringing  the  best  sen- 
timents of  the  most  illustrious  peoples. 

' '  You  have  come, "  he  said,  ' '  to  turn  over, 
if  it  may  be,  the  last  and  most  august  page  of 
the  Gospel,  the  page  that  ordains  peace  among 
the  children  of  the  one  Creator;  and  here  in 
this  city,  which  has  rejoiced  to  proclaim  fra- 
ternity to  its  own  citizens,  you  have  assem- 
bled to  proclaim  fraternity  to  all  men.  Wel- 
come, welcome  to  you  all !" 

The  orator  then  proceeded  to  demonstrate 
his  view  that  peace  —  universal  peace  —  was 
not  only  an  object  that  was  attainable,  but 
was  a  result  that  was  inevitable;  maintaining 
that  as  its  final  accomplishment  might  be  re- 
tarded, so  also  it  might  be  accelerated. 

This  prediction  of  the  future  concord  of 
nations  was  couched  in  terms  equally  elevated 
and  pathetic,  and  his  speech  was  repeatedly 
interrupted  by  loud  bursts  of  applause. 

For  three  days  the  congress  discussed  the 
great  question  with  dignity  and  propriety, 
but  it  was  the  final  session  on  the  24th  that 
was  most  crowded  and  enthusiastic. 

In  his  closing  speech,  Victor  Hugo  ex- 
claimed, "From  this  day  forward,  gentle- 
men, we  have  a  common  fatherland ;  we  are 
henceforth  all  compatriots.  .  .  .  What,  for 
the  last  three  days,  has  been  the  vision  before 
your  gaze?  It  has  been  that  of  England 
grasping  the  hand  of  France,  and  America 
grasping  the  hand  of  Europe.  I  know  not 
what  sight  could  be  finer.  .  .  .  And  now  go 
back  to  your  homes,  and  announce  that  you 
have  come  from  your  fellow-countrymen  of 
France." 

While,  that  morning,  M.  1'Abbe  Duquerry, 
the  cure  of  the  Madeleine,  had  been  speaking 
on  the  subject  of  charity,  a  member  of  the 
congress  had  interrupted  him,  to  remind  him 
that  the  24th  of  August  was  St.  Bartholo- 
mew's Day.  The  venerable  priest  had  sim- 
ply turned  his  head  away,  as  if  he  rejected 
the  association.  Victor  Hugo,  however,  took 
occasion  to  refer  to  the  coincidence. 

"Yes, "he  said,  "on  this  very  day,  two 
hundred  and  seventy  -  seven  years  ago,  this 
city  of  Paris  was  aroused  in  terror  amid 
the  darkness  of  the  night.  The  bell,  known 
as  the  silver  bell,  chimed  from  the  Palais 


164 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS  TIME. 


de  Justice,  and  a  bloody  deed,  unprecedented 
in  the  annals  of  crime,  was  perpetrated; 
and  now,  on  that  self -same  date,  in  that  self- 
same city,  God  has  brought  together  into 
one  general  concourse  the  representatives  of 
that  old  antagonism,  and  has  bidden  them 
transform  their  sentiments  into  sentiments  of 
love.  The  sad  significance  of  this  mournful 
anniversary  is  removed;  each  drop  of  blood 
is  replaced  by  a  ray  of  light.  Well-nigh  be- 
neath the  shadow  of  that  tower  whence  tolled 
the  fatal  vespers  of  St.  Bartholomew,  not  only 
Englishmen  and  Frenchmen,  Germans  and 
Italians,  Europeans  and  Americans,  but  actu- 
ally Papists  and  Huguenots  have  been  con- 
tent to  meet,  happy — nay,  proud — to  unite 
themselves  together  in  an  embrace  alike  hon- 
orable and  indissoluble." 

As  he  pronounced  these  words,  M.  1'Abbe 
Duquerry  and  M.  Coquerel,  the  Protestant 
pastor,  threw  themselves  into  each  other's 
arms  in  front  of  the  president's  chair.  En- 
thusiastic applause  broke  from  the  platform 
and  from  the  audience  in  the  public  seats; 
English  and  Americans  rose  to  their  feet, 
waving  their  hats  and  handkerchiefs,  and,  at 
the  prompting  of  Mr.  Cobden,  gave  three 
times  three  cheers  for  the  orator. 

In  January,  1850,  M.  de  Falloux,  who  had 
been  appointed  Minister  of  Public  Instruc- 
tion, brought  in  a  new  educational  bill, 
which  seemed  to  many  to  give  the  monopoly 
of  teaching  into  the  hands  of  the  clergy.  In 
the  debate  that  ensued  M.  Barthelemy  Saint- 
Hilaire  declared  himself  a  most  decided  ad- 
versary to  the  proposed  law,  and  was  fol- 
lowed by  Victor  Hugo,  who  criticised  it  with 
extreme  severity.  He  affirmed  that,  with  his 
consent,  the  education  of  youth  should  never 
be  intrusted  to  the  clerical  party,  who  were 
ever  seeking  to  put  restrictions  on  the  human 
mind ;  the  Church  and  State  must  each  hold 
its  separate  course.  "  Your  law,"  he  said  to 
M.  de  Falloux,  "is  a  law  with  a  mask.  It 
says  one  thing,  it  does  anbther.  It  may  bear 
the  aspect  of  liberty,  but  it  means  thraldom. 
It  is  practically  confiscation  under  the  name 
of  a  deed  of  gift.  But  it  is  all  one  with  your 
usual  policy.  Every  time  that  you  forge  a 
new  chain  you  cry,  '  See,  here  is  freedom!'  " 

A  few  months  later  Victor  Hugo  felt  him- 
self called  upon  to  raise  his  voice  against  the 
law  of  transportation,  under  which  political 
criminals  were  not  only  to  be  sent  to  Nouka- 
hiva,  but  were  liable  to  be  shut  up  in  citadels. 
A  convict,  Troncon-Ducoudray,  aptly  desig- 
nated its  aim  as  "a  dry  guillotine."  The 


poet,  on  this  occasion,  delivered  a  speech  of 
great  oratorical  power;  he  appealed  strenu- 
ously for  mercy  to  the  vanquished,  and 
warned  the  conquerors  not  to  assign  penal- 
ties which  sooner  or  later  might  return  upon 
their  own  heads.  He  asserted  that  there 
were  far  better  occupations  than  creating 
political  galleys,  and  that  while  the  problems 
of  civilization  were  waiting  to  be  solved 
there  was  no  time  to  be  lost  in  devising 
schemes  of  mischief  to  one  another. 

The  very  day  after  the  delivery  of  his 
speech  a  subscription  was  set  on  foot  to  dis- 
tribute it  over  the  country.  M.  de  Girardin 
proposed  that  a  medal  should  be  struck, 
bearing  an  effigy  of  the  orator,  and  having 
for  its  motto  the  extract  from  the  harangue, 
"When  men  introduce  injustice  into  their 
laws,  God  supplies  the  justice,  and,  through 
the  law,  smites  the  authors  of  it."  The 
government  could  not  interfere  to  prevent 
the  issue  of  the  medal,  but  it  put  a  veto 
upon  the  inscription. 

And  now  the  hour  was  approaching  when 
M.  Thiers  was  to  make  the  announcement 
that  "  the  Empire  is  made  !" — the  hour  in 
which  was  enacted  one  of  the  most  odious 
and  bloody  crimes  ever  registered  in  history. 

For  some  time  Victor  Hugo  had  foreboded 
the  danger  that  was  threatening  the  Repub- 
lic. During  the  days  that  followed  upon  the 
Revolution  of  1848,  he  had,  by  means  of 
L'£ceiiement,  kept  up  an  attack  upon  Gen- 
eral Cavaignac,  whose  dictatorship  he  dis- 
trusted, and  he  had  supported  Prince  Louis 
Napoleon  Bonaparte,  even  so  far  as  to  give 
him  his  vote.  It  was  a  heavy  penalty  that 
he  had  to  pay  for  this  error,  but  it  was 
shared  by  many  others  besides  himself. 

At  first  the  conduct  of  the  prince  gave  no 
cause  for  uneasiness ;  he  was  universally  re- 
garded as  the  offspring  of  the  Revolution, 
and  no  one  thought  of  him  as  a  Napoleon; 
in  the  common  reckoning  he  was  a  demo- 
crat. During  his  imprisonment  and  exile 
he  had  published  ' '  L'Extinction  du  Paupe- 
risme,"  "  L'Analyse  de  la  Question  des  Su- 
cres, "  and  ' '  Les  Idees  Napoleoniennes, "  all 
of  them  books  that  seemed  inspired  by  a 
yearning  for  progress,  by  democratic  senti- 
ments,- and  by  social  sympathies. 

Calling  himself  a  humanitarian,  he  avowed 
himself  a  citizen  rather  than  a  Bonaparte, 
In  "Les  Reveries  Politiques,"  he  professed 
himself  a  sincere  republican.  After  the  Revo- 
lution of  February  he  succeeded  in  securing 
his  election  to  the  Constitutional  Assembly; 


AN  EPISODE  OF  THE  COUP   D'KTAT  (LiiS  CHATIMENTSj. 


166 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


and,  having  hailed  the  Republic,  he  declared 
from  the  tribune  that  his  life  should  be  de- 
voted to  consolidation,  and  that  he  had  no 
thought  other  than  for  liberty. 

Louis  Blanc,  as  well  as  Degeorges,  Peau- 
cher,  and  other  pronounced  republicans,  who 
had  visited  him  in  his  confinement  at  Ham, 
had  been  quite  charmed  by  his  doctrines;  he 
was  then  studying  the  extinction  of  pauper- 
ism. Though  no  one  regarded  him  as  gifted 
with  a  strong  intellect,  he  was  credited  with 
a  genuine  honesty  of  purpose  that  had  been 
established  by  his  misfortunes  and  enlarged 
by  the  failure  of  his  plans.  He  was  con- 
sidered as  a  victim  of  Louis  Philippe's,  and 
the  articles  that  he  published  in  the  Revue  du 
Pas  de  Calais  were  applauded  by  the  repub- 
lican press.  The  poorer  classes  were  utterly 
misled  by  his  promises,  his  name  of  Napo- 
leon having  the  effect  of  shedding  a  certain 
halo  of  glory  around  his  person.  He  had 
been  cordially  received  in  1848  by  the  repre- 
sentatives of  the  people,  who  never  thought 
of  regarding  him  as  dangerous.  Those  who 
mistrusted  his  convictions  called  him  an 
idiot. 

On  his  return  from  exile  he  went  to  see 
Victor  Hugo,  and  said  to  him  : 

"What  would  it  be  for  me  to  be  Napoleon 
over  again?  Why,  it  would  not  simply  be 
an  ambition,  it  would  be  a  crime.  Why 
should  you  suppose  me  a  fool?  I  am  not  a 
great  man,  and  when  the  Republic  is  made  I 
shall  never  follow  the  steps  of  Napoleon. 
As  for  me,  I  am  honest;  and  I  shall  follow 
in  the  way  of  Washington." 

And  what  he  said  was  heard  by  Saint- 
Priest,  the  Academician,  who,  while  he  lis- 
tened, believed  in  the  speaker's  sincerity. 
Those  who  abide  in  integrity  are  slow  in 
suspecting  treachery. 

When  Louis  Napoleon  was  elected  Presi- 
dent of  the  Republic,  he  laid  his  hand  upon 
his  heart  and  swore  fidelity  to  the  Constitu- 


tion. Again  and  again  he  subsequently  de- 
clared that  he  was  bound  by  his  oath. 

It  was  not  long,  however,  before  intrigues 
began  to  be  discovered,  and  men  of  far-see- 
ing power  began  to  be  anxious. 

Proudhon  wrote  that  the  people  had  taken 
a  fancy  to  a  prince;  and  "  Citizen  Bonaparte, 
who  but  yesterday  was  a  mere  speck  in  the 
fiery  heavens,  has  become  an  ominous  cloud, 
bearing  storm  and  tempest  in  its  bosom." 

Victor  Hugo's  eyes  were  then  opened,  and 
he  saw  how  miserably  he  had  been  duped. 
When  the  promoters  of  the  Empire  were 
scheming  to  mutilate  the  law  of  universal 
suffrage,  he  mounted  the  tribune  and  made 
a  speech  in  its  defence,  the  peroration  of 
which,  in  the  way  of  oratory,  has  rarely  been 
surpassed.  To  the  people  he  said,  "When 
once  you  shall  have  the  right  of  voting,  you 
will  be  the  sovereign  power,  and  you  will  no 
longer  make  or  foster  disturbance."  As 
often  as  any  effort  was  made  to  stifle  liberty 
he  rose  as  a  champion,  and,  grave  and  pale 
amid  the  ever-increasing  tumult,  and  dis- 
daining the  abuse  and  contempt  with  which 
he  was  assailed,  he  vindicated  the  freedom 
of  the  press,  and  eulogized  the  benefits  of 
the  Revolution. 

The  coup  d'etat,  therefore,  did  not  take 
him  by  surprise.  Already  he  had  foreseen 
it;  and  when  the  hour  of  the  struggle  came, 
he  did  his  duty,  and  did  it  well.  He  exerted 
himself  to  organize  some  resistance.  When 
the  bullets  of  the  hired  soldiers  were  killing 
women  and  children  in  the  streets,  and  po- 
lice-agents were  breaking  open  with  crow- 
bars the  desks  of  those  who  were  loyal  to 
the  Republic,  he  held  firmly  to  his  principles. 

This  fatal  struggle  has  been  recorded  by 
the  poet  in  his  marvellous  trilogy,  "Napole- 
on le  Petit,"  "Les  Chatiments,"and  "L'His- 
toire  d'un  Crime,"  which  were  the  first  works 
of  his  exile,  when  "  indignation  added  a  bra- 
zen string  to  his  lyre." 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS  TIME. 


167 


CHAPTER  XXII. 

Aets  Lending  to  Banishment.  —  A  Price  Set  upon  the  Poet's  Ileacl — Drive  Through  Paris. — A  Woman'* 
Devotion — Sous  and  Friends  in  Prison — Arrival  in  Brussels. — "L'Histoire  d'un  Crime." — "Les  Hommes 
de  1'Exil."— Proposition  to  the  Literary  Society  of  France.— La  Grande  Place  in  Brussels.— "  NnpoMon  1« 
Petit."— Alarm  of  the  Belgian  Government. — The  Exile's  Expulsion. 

an,  did  her  utmost  to  secure  the  poet  a  safe 
asylum.  She  applied  at  many  doors;  and, 
undiscouraged  by  the  denials  she  received, 
she  persevered  in  her  attendance,  and  devised 
many  schemes  for  his  escape  with  undaunted 
determination. 

The  drive  was  sufficiently  terrible.  It  was 
past  ruined  barricades  and  pointed  cannon; 
it  was  amid  drunken  patrols  thirsting  for 
blood,  and  police  agents  in  pursuit  of  honest 
men.  From  time  to  time  they  were  brought 
to  a  standstill;  Victor  Hugo  had  to  crouch 
in  a  corner  of  the  carriage,  while  Madame 
Drouet  would  mount  the  stairs  to  the  apart- 
ments of  her  friends,  and  appeal  to  them  to 
return  her  past  favors  by  sheltering  the  poet. 
But  every  appeal  was  in  vain;  every  door 
was  closed,  friendship  was  terror-stricken, 
and  gratitude  a  thing  of  the  past. 

At  last,  after  weary  hours  spent  in  anxiety 
and  fatigue,  the  fugitives,  almost  sinking  in 
despair,  found  a  retreat  under  the  roof  of  a 
relation  of  Victor  Hugo's,  who  was  the  man- 
ager of  a  Legitimist  journal.  With  gener- 
ous sympathy,  he  took  the  risk  of  receiving 
the  proscribed  man  into  his  house,  and,  after 
keeping  him  concealed  for  five  days,  pro- 
cured a  passport,  by  means  of  which  the 
outlaw,  having  adopted  a  complete  disguise, 
was  enabled  to  depart  on  the  12th  of  Decem- 
ber from  the  Northern  Railway  station. 

He  arrived  in  Brussels  the  following  morn- 
ing at  daybreak,  and  immediately  wrote  to 
inform  his  family  and  benefactors  of  his 
safety. 

His  sons  had  been  unable  to  come  to  his 
assistance;  they  were  co-editors  of  L 'tene- 
ment, and  the  whole  of  the  staff,  six  in  num- 
ber, had  been  thrown  into  prison.  Charles 
Hugo  had  already  been  confined  four  months 
in  the  Conciergerie  because  he  had  written  an 
article  on  capital  punishment,  in  reference 
to  the  terrible  execution  of  Montcharmont; 
his  brother  Francois  (who  had  dropped  the 
name  of  Victor  in  order  that  his  writings 


AND  now  the  penalty  of  exile  awaited  the 
patriot.  Victor  Hugo  had  asked  the  Assem- 
bly whether,  having  had  a  Napoleon  the 
Great,  they  were  now  to  have  a  Napoleon 
the  Little;  he  had  inquired  of  the  Royalists 
how  it  was  that  they  entered  into  such 
strange  fellowship  with  the  Empire,  pointing 
out  significantly  how  the  Imperialists,  who 
had  murdered  the  Due  d'Enghien,  and  the 
Legitimists,  who  had  shot  Murat,  were  now 
grasping  each  other's  blood-stained  hands. 
From  the  tribune  he  had  proclaimed  that  the 
Republic  is  invincible,  and  that  in  France  it 
would  prove  itself  indestructible  as  being 
identical  on  the  one  hand  with  the  age,  on 
the  other  with  the  people.  In  lofty  lan- 
guage, alike  prophetic  of  the  future  and 
condemnatory  of  the  present,  he  had  poured 
out  his  indignation  in  the  ears  of  the  nation. 
The  result  of  all  this  was  that  Bonaparte 
wrote  his  name  at  the  head  of  the  list  of  the 
proscribed. 

All  the  details  of  his  struggle  have  been 
related  by  himself  in  his  well-known  work, 
"L'Histoire  d'un  Crime, "so  that  it  is  unnec- 
essary to  dwell  upon  them  here. 

Though  a  representative  of  the  people,  he 
was  turned  out  of  the  Palais  Bourbon  with 
the  other  members  of  the  Left;  he  took  an 
active  part  in  the  efforts  made  by  the  Com- 
mittee of  Resistance;  he  drew  up  the  pla- 
cards that  announced  the  deposition  of  the 
perjured  prince;  but  at  last,  when  the  people 
were  terrified  and  Paris  had  become  the 
prey  of  the  myrmidons  in  power,  Victor 
Hugo  had  no  alternative  but  to  fly. 

A  price  was  set  upon  his  head;  a  reward 
of  25,000  francs  was  offered  to  any  one  who 
would  either  kill  him  or  arrest  him;  but  as 
he  knew  that  the  sacrifice  of  his  life  could 
be  of  no  benefit  to  any  one,  he  did  his  best 
to  escape  the  assassin's  hand,  and,  leaving  his 
home  and  his  family,  he  started  off  through 
Paris  in  &  fiacre. 

Madame  Drouet,  a  brave  and  noble  worn- 


168 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


might  not  bear  the  same  signature  as  his 
father's)  was  undergoing  a  similar  penalty  on 
account  of  his  having  taken  part  with  the 
outlaws;  Paul  Meurice,  who,  besides  being 
one  of  the  joint  editors,  was  the  manager  of 
the  paper,  was  their  fellow-prisoner  for  nine 
months;  and  Auguste  Vacquerie  exposed 
himself  to  a  similar  punishment,  for  when 
the  paper  was  suspended  for  a  month  he  en- 
deavored to  start  it  afresh  under  a  new  title, 
L'Avenement .  . .  du  Peuple;  and,  after  being 
charged  under  five  indictments,  one  of  which 
rendered  him  liable  to  death,  he  escaped  with 
a  sentence  of  six  months'  imprisonment. 

At  this  same  period  the  walls  of  the  Con- 
ciergerie  detained  Proudhon,  the  representa- 
tive of  Le  Peuple,  Louis  Jourdain  of  Le  Slecle, 
Nefftzer  of  La  Presse,  and  some  scores  of 
other  journalists.  Bonaparte  had  found  that 
the  readiest  way  of  suppressing  the  papers 
was  to  lock  up  the  editors. 

In  their  prison-cells  the  sons  and  friends 
of  Victor  Hugo  could  hear  the  roar  of  can- 
non and  the  rattle  of  musketry;  and  from 
time  to  time  they  saw  groups  of  wounded 
and  dying  brought  in  to  swell  their  numbers, 
lest  they  should  recover  sufficient  strength 
to  rouse  themselves  to  fresh  efforts  in  de- 
fence of  liberty. 

For  a  while  Victor  Hugo's  privilege  as 
deputy  protected  him  from  arrest ;  but  when 
Bonaparte  began  to  feel  the  inconvenience 
of  the  restriction,  he  did  not  hesitate  to  seize 
his  victims  at  night-time  in  their  beds,  so 
that  when  Victor  Hugo  effected  his  escape 
Paul  Meurice  quite  believed  that  he  had 
been  shot,  though,  out  of  consideration  for 
the  sons,  he  kept  his  presentiments  to  himself. 

Arrived  in  Brussels,  Victor  Hugo  took  up 
his  quarters  in  the  Grande  Place,  and  soon 
sent  for  his  wife  and  prepared  to  recom- 
mence his  work. 

He  felt  that  a  new  duty  now  devolved 
upon  him.  Hitherto  he  had  sung  of  human- 
ity, of  women  and  of  children ;  he  had  been 
the  consoler  of  the  afflicted  and  of  those  in 
despair;  now  he  would  be  an  avenger.  Ac- 
cordingly, he  tasked  himself  to  compile  a  his- 
tory ;  his  lashes  should  reach  to  the  faces  of 
Napoleon  and  his  acolytes  at  the  Tuileries; 
he  became  at  once  the  Tacitus  and  the  Juve- 
nal of  his  time,  only  his  accents  were  mightier 
than  theirs  because  his  indignation  was  greater 
and  his  wrath  more  just.  He  resolved  to 
give  in  his  own  words  the  record  of  the  crime 
that  had  been  committed,  and  in  all  their  ter- 
rible reality  he  has  depicted  the  scenes  which 


lie  witnessed,  and  told  of  all  the  atrocious 
phases  of  the  outrage. 

Each  morning  brought  many  knocks  at 
the  door  of  the  little  room  he  occupied,  as 
other  outlaws,  who  had  escaped  like  himself, 
came  to  bring  him  fresh  information  or  new 
documents  to  aid  him  in  the  history  he  was 
composing. 

Cournet  came  to  tell  him  how  he  had  stran- 
gled in  a  fly  the  police  spy  who  had  arrested 
him  and  was  carrying  him  off  to  be  shot ; 
and  Camille  Berru,  who  had  been  one  of  the 
editors  of  L'flcenement,  came  to  relate  his 
experiences.  Then  there  was  Noe"!  Parfait, 
who,  although  he  was  under  no  compulsion 
to  quit  Paris,  yet  felt  it  his  duty  to  seek  pov- 
erty in  exile;  leaving  his  wife  and  his  son 
Paul, himself  a  writer  of  talent.behind  him.he 
came  to  Brussels,  utterly  without  resources, 
and  was  only  too  glad  to  betake  himself  to 
Victor  Hugo ;  he  undertook  the  office  of 
secretary  and  amanuensis  to  his  friend  Du- 
mas, and,  as  Charles  Hugo  has  incidentally 
mentioned  in  the  charming  pages  of  "  Les 
Hommes  de  1'Exil,"  he  found  the  engage- 
ment anything  but  light. 

Dumas  had  been  residing  in  Brussels  for 
some  time,  not  on  account  of  any  political 
necessity,  but  because  he  found  himself  best 
able  there  to  apply  himself  to  his  work.  He 
had  never  cared  much  for  politics ;  but  when 
he  found  that  Victor  Hugo  was  driven  into 
banishment,  he  made  up  his  mind  never  to 
see  Louis  Napoleon  again,  although  he  had 
previously  been  on  intimate  terms  with  him. 
He  kept  his  word,  never  going  either  to  Com- 
piegne  or  the  Tuileries  any  more. 

It  was  during  this  period  that  he  was  writ- 
ing his  "Memoires,"  and  it  was  almost  by 
the  immediate  dictation  of  Victor  Hugo, 
whom  he  saw  well-nigh  every  day,  that  he 
depicted  the  leading  incidents  of  the  poet's 
childhood  and  youth. 

Victor  Schoelcher,  who  made  his  escape  in 
the  disguise  of  a  priest,  was  another  friend 
who  came  to  console  the  exile.  He  expressed 
his  contrition  for  having  mistrusted  him 
through  so  many  years,  and  for  having  failed 
to  perceive  his  true  love  for  the  democracy. 
The  testimony  of  this  venerable  man  was 
but  one  of  many  marks  of  esteem  that  Vic- 
tor Hugo  received.  Thus  cheered  and  sup- 
ported by  sympathy  and  affection,  he  per- 
severed in  writing  "L'Histoire  d'un  Crime," 
completing  his  work  in  the  five  months  be- 
tween December,  1851,  and  May,  1852.  But 
the  book  was  never  published  until  1877, 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  ffIS  TIME. 


169 


when  it  appeared  probable  that  reaction 
would  bring  about  a  second  coup  d'etat. 

After  this  production  was  finished,  and  Vic- 
tor Hugo  commenced  "Napoleon  le  Petit," 
his  visitors  became  more  numerous  than  ever. 
His  door  seemed  never  closed;  and  all  who 
knocked  obtained  admittance.  Intent  upon 
his  writing,  the  author  would  hardly  look  up 
to  see  who  had  arrived,  and  would  motion 
his  guest  to  take  a  seat,  not  entering  into 
conversation  until  he  had  finished  the  chap- 
ter on  which  he  was  engaged. 

Among  the  most  frequent  of  his  visitors 
was  General  Lamoriciere,  who,  arm  in  arm 
with  Charras,  Bedeau,  or  Hetzei,  refugees 
like  himself,  might  constantly  be  seen  per- 
ambulating the  streets  and  inveighing  ve- 
hemently against  the  state  of  things  in  Paris. 
Morning  after  morning  he  would  make  his 
appearance  in  Victor  Hugo's  study,  light  his 
pipe,  and  fling  himself  on  a  sofa,  twirling 
his  mustache  until  the  writer  should  please 
good-naturedly  to  read  him  a  few  pages  of 
"  Napoleon  le  Petit."  This  would  generally 
act  as  a  sort  of  narcotic  upon  him,  and  he 
would  be  calmer  for  a  few  hours,  like  a  man 
who  has  applied  a  sedative  to  an  aching  tooth. 
The  hero  of  many  battle-fields  has  been  de- 
scribed by  Charles  Hugo  as  having  been  cap- 
tivated by  the  monarchy  and  tempted  by  the 
republic.  He  subsequently  placed  his  sword 
at  the  disposal  of  the  Pope,  in  whom,  how- 
ever, he  had  not  much  faith;  and  in  1852, 
under  the  influence  of  his  illustrious  fellow- 
exiles,  he  avowed  himself  a  stanch  supporter 
of  the  republican  cause. 

Emile  de  Girardin  was  another  who  had 
taken  refuge  in  Brussels,  at  the  Hotel  de  Belle 
Vue.  Thus  temporarily  removed  from  the 
agitating  world  of  politics  in  which  alone  he 
seemed  able  to  exist,  he  occupied  himself  in 
studying  a  number  of  questions  in  which  he 
took  no  little  interest ;  he  investigated  the 
relations  between  children  and  the  State,  and 
wrote  one  of  his  most  interesting  works  upon 
the  subject  of  women  and  marriage.  But 
he  could  not  remain  long  away  from  Paris, 
which  he  loved  so  well ;  when  guns  were  si- 
lent, pens  were  weapons,  and  he  was  unable 
to  resist  the  desire  of  taking  up  afresh  the 
paper  warfare.  He  returned  to  France  just 
at  the  time  when  some  obscure  author,  a 
toady  of  the  coup  d'etat,  was  proposing  to 
the  Literary  Society  of  Paris  that  it  should 
erase  from  its  roll  the  name  of  the  writer  of 
"Notre  Dame"  and  "  Les  Feuilles  d'Au- 
tomne,"  as  well  as  that  of  Villemain,  one  of 


the  founders  of  the  society;  and  he  had  the 
mortification  of  seeing  that  the  proposal  was 
received  with  approbation,  so  abject  was  the 
fear  that  filled  the  general  mind. 

Brussels  did  not  offer  quarters  that  could 
altogether  be  considered  hospitable,  and  out 
of  the  seven  thousand  proscribed  Frenchmen 
who  found  refuge  in  Belgium,  only  two  hun- 
dred and  forty-seven  stayed  there  for  any 
length  of  time.  In  this  number  were  in- 
cluded generals,  officers  of  lower  rank,  free- 
holders, magistrates,  notaries,  barristers,  mer- 
chants, bankers,  artists,  and  mechanics,  the 
names  of  them  all  being  specified  in  Charles 
Hugo's  touching  account.  The  myrmidons 
of  the  coup  d'etat  might  call  them  ' '  drinkers 
of  blood,"  but  they  were  in  truth  a  pleiad  of 
upright  men,  the  elite  of  the  brave  and  illus- 
trious. Among  them,  either  in  the  capital 
or  other  towns  of  Belgium,  were  David  the 
sculptor,  Ledru  -  Rollin,  Michel  de  Bourges, 
Bancel,  Louis  Blanc,  Eugene  Sue,  Charras, 
Barbeis,  and  Pauline  Holland.  All  the  talent 
and  genius,  the  virtue  and  honor,  the  integrity 
and  intellect,  the  vital  energy,  and  whatever 
constituted  the  glory  of  the  nation,  seemed 
to  be  expelled  from  France  by  the  Empire, 
and  driven  among  foreigners  to  eat  the  bitter 
bread  of  poverty  and  exile. 

Victor  Hugo, the  most  illustrious  of  all, was 
also  the  most  courageous ;  he  encountered 
adversity  with  a  placid  brow ;  and,  with  a 
mingling  of  scorn  and  good-nature,  with  in- 
dignation that  did  not  disturb  his  gentleness, 
he  fought  with  indomitable  perseverance  for 
vengeance  and  for  life. 

As  soon  as  his  sons  were  set  at  liberty,  they 
hastened  to  his  side;  and  in  January,  1852, 
they  found  him  in  the  third  place  of  resi- 
dence he  had  had  in  Brussels,  at  No.  27  in 
the  Grande  Place.  There,  beneath  a  tobac- 
conist's signboard,  just  opposite  the  glory  of 
Belgium,  the  magnificent  Hotel  de  Ville,  the 
poet  occupied  a  fairly  spacious  apartment  on 
the  first  floor  of  a  house  that  he  has  rendered 
historical.  The  principal  furniture  of  the 
room  was  a  sofa  that  served  for  a  bed,  a  table 
that  had  to  be  used  both  for  writing  and  for 
meals,  and  an  old  mirror  over  the  mantel- 
piece. 

The  view  of  the  Hotel  de  Ville  from  his 
window  was  a  perpetual  satisfaction  to  him, 
as  he  had  ever  been  an  enthusiastic  admirer 
of  stately  architecture;  and  he  made  up  his 
mind  to  continue  in  his  modest  quarters  so 
long  as  Napoleon  III.  should  be  at  the  Tui- 
leries.  Fate,  however,  ruled  otherwise. 


170 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS  TIME. 


On  his  first  coming  to  Brussels  he  was,  as 
a  Knight  of  the  Order  of  Leopold,  entitled 
to  the  respect  of  the  Belgians,  and  was  very 
cordially  received  by  the  government.  The 
people  liked  him;  the  burgomaster  paid  him 
almost  daily  visits;  his  partners  in  exile  had 
constant  recourse  to  his  ready  aid,  and  he 
was  the  means  of  saving  more  than  one  of 
them  from  starvation. 

But  under  an  over -strong  government  a 
people  has  not  the  free  disposal  of  its  sym- 
pathies. The  triumph  of  the  Empire  over- 
awed the  statesmen  of  Belgium. 

From  an  inkstand  long  preserved  as  a  relic 
by  the  prince  the  poet  wrote  a  work  which 
made  the  heart  of  Bonaparte  tremble.  "-Na- 
poleon le  Petit "  had  so  wide  a  circulation, 
and  produced  so  great  an  impression,  that 
the  Belgian  government  took  alarm.  Afraid 
of  Napoleon  III.,  it  came  to  the  resolution 
that  Victor  Hugo  must  be  expelled.  In  or- 
der to  justify  this  violation  of  the  right  of 
asylum  in  a  free  country,  the  Chamber  had 


|  to  pass  a  new  law,  which  still  bears  the  name 
of  Faider,  its  author,  a  shrewd  magistrate 
who  had  obtained  rapid  promotion  in  Paris 
in  1852.  Fortified  by  this  act,  the  authori- 
ties informed  Victor  Hugo  that  he  must  seek 
a  refuge  elsewhere.  Immediately  he  went 

1  to  Antwerp,  whence  he  embarked  for  Eng- 
land, having  been  accompanied  to  the  port 

j  by  a  number  of  his  proscribed  countrymen, 
and  by  not  a  few  Belgians  who  were  not  re- 
sponsible for  the  decision  of  their  rulers. 
At  parting,  Victor  Hugo  spoke  a  few  words 

i  to  his  friends,  several  of  whom  were  destined 

|  to  die  in  exile.  Addressing  Madier-Montjau, 
Charras,Deschanel,Dussoubs,Perdiguier,and 
the  Belgians,  he  said  that  although  he  had 
been  attainted  with  treason,  hunted  away  first 
from  Paris,  and  now  from  Brussels,  he  should 
ever  remember  with  gratitude  the  land  that 
had  received  him. 

Cheers  and  sobs  followed  him  to  the  vessel 
on  which  he  embarked  for  a  land  where  the 
law  would  be  respected. 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


171 


CHAPTER   XXIII. 

Jersey.— Reception  of  the  Exiles.  -Victor  Hugo's  Resources.— Sale  of  Furniture.— Apartments  in  the  Rue 
de  La  Tour  d'Auvergne.— Vucqiierie's  Sketches — Formalities  of  Society.— The  Privileges  of  a  French 
Peer.— An  Imperial  Spy. 


VICTOR  HUGO  merely  passed  through  Eng- 
land, and  on  the  5th  of  August,  1852,  landed 
in  Jersey,  where  he  was  received  by  a  party 
of  French  outlaws,  who  were  awaiting  him 
upon  the  pier  at  St.  Helier.  In  a  few  feeling 
words  he  thanked  them  for  their  kind  wel- 
come, and  exhorted  them  to  maintain  entire 
concord  among  themselves,  insisting  that 
there  ought  to  be  unity  between  those  who 
shared  the  same  sorrows  and  the  same  hopes. 


tie  colony  was  not  destined  to  remain  long 
undisturbed;  but  at  the  time  of  the  poet's 
arrival  there  was  no  immediate  ground  for 
suspicion  of  danger,  either  to  its  moral  or 
material  liberty. 

Victor  Hugo  took  a  small  detached  house 
on  the  sea-shore,  on  a  part  known  as  Marine 
Terrace.  It  was  only  one  story  high,  and 
had  a  balcony,  a  terrace,  and  a  garden.  The 
rent  of  this  modest  residence  was  1500  francs 


1  i 


A  JERSEY  LANDSCAPE. 


The  number  of  exiles  that  had  betaken 
themselves  to  Jersey  after  the  coup  d'etat 
was  not  very  large ;  but  the  island,  with  its 
independent  constitution  and  local  govern- 
ment, seemed  a  spot  well  adapted  to  protect 
the  rights  of  banished  men  whose  object  it 
was  to  live  by  their  own  industry.  The  lit- 


a  year.  The  poet's  resources  did  not  allow 
him  to  occupy  a  more  commodious  dwelling, 
his  entire  income  now  amounting  to  only 
7000  francs,  out  of  which  he  had  nine  persons 
to  keep. 

No  more  money  was  to  be  expected  from 
France.    ' '  Hernani, "  "  Ruy  Bias, "  and  ' '  Ma- 


172 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS    TIME. 


rion  Delorme  "  had  been  strictly  forbidden 
by  the  future  author  of  "  The  Life  of  Ciesar," 
who  at  one  time  thought  of  being  a  candidate 
for  the  Academic.  Neither  were  there  any 
more  author's  profits  to  be  received.  His  very 
poems,  though  not  actually  prohibited,  were 
cried  down  and  insulted;  any  one  who  had 
a  copy  of  "Lea  Contemplations"  or  "Les 
Feuilles  d'Automne"  in  his  house  ran  the 
risk  of  coming  under  the  suspicion  of  the 
ruling  powers.  The  partisans  of  the  Em- 
pire had  burned  or  hidden  ' '  Notre  Dame  de 


handcuffed.  So  successful  was  this  policy 
that  for  the  time  it  was  an  utter  impossibil- 
ity for  the  exile  on  a  foreign  shore  to  de- 
rive any  emolument  from  his  literary  labors. 
"  L'Histoire  d'un  Crime,"  as  we  have  al- 
ready stated,  had  not  yet  been  published; 
"Napoleon  le  Petit"  had  been  secretly 
printed  in  Brussels,  and  a  considerable  num- 
ber of  copies  had  been  sold  clandestinely, 
but  all  the  profits  went  to  the  booksellers. 
Honorable  as  the  Belgians  as  a  nation  are, 
it  is  known  only  too  well  that  some  of 


THE  EXILE. 


Paris"  and  "Les  Odes  et  Ballades,"  and  the 
superintendents  of  police  were  waging  war 
against  the  books  as  being  dangerous.  It 
was  almost  as  much  as  a  man's  place  was 
worth  to  mention  the  name  of  Victor  Hugo 
at  all,  while  to  eulogize  it  was  to  incur  the 
hazard  of  being  marched  off  straight  to 
prison.  Silence  on  such  subjects  was  the 
order  of  the  day,  as  enjoined  by  the  ministry 
of  the  Empire  ;  and  Napoleon  found  his 
consolation  in  beholding  genius  bound  and 


these  booksellers  were  not  over  -  conscien- 
tious, and  took  care  to  look  after  themselves 
in  the  matter  of  this  book,  and  subsequently 
of  "Les  Chfitiments,"  without  providing  that 
any  of  the  bank-notes  should  find  their  way 
to  the  purse  of  the  exiled  author. 

But  Victor  Hugo  accepted  poverty  as 
complacently  as  he  had  ever  accepted 
wealth. 

He  had  a  mission  to  fulfil  and  work  to 
accomplish,  and  consequently  there  was  no 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS  TIME. 


178 


hardship  which  he  was  not  prepared  to  en- 
dure with  fortitude  and  cheerfulness. 

Meanwhile  he  had  a  certain  position  to 
maintain,  and  the  sum  realized  by  the  sale  of 
his  effects  in  Paris  was  an  acceptable  addi- 
tion to  his  resources. 

He  had  left  the  Place  Royaie  in  1848,  and 
after  a  short  stay  at  No.  5  Rue  de  1'Isly,  ad- 
joining the  St.  Lazare  Railway  station,  he 
had  taken  up  his  residence  at  No.  37  Rue  de 
La  Tour  d'Auvergne,  in  apartments  from 
which  there  was  an  extensive  view  of  the 
city.  This  was  his  abode  at  the  time  when 
the  coup  d'etat  took  place,  and  here  it  was 
that  he  had  brought  his  collection  of  artistic 
treasures  that  had  now  to  be  submitted  to 
auction. 

Theophile  Gautier  was  at  the  pains  to  an- 


coup  d'etat  money  was  scarce  in  every  quar- 
ter. A  few  of  Victor  Hugo's  friends — among 
whom,  as  usual,  was  Paul  Meurice — came  to 
rescue  what  they  could  from  the  hands  of 
the  brokers,  but  the  bidding  was  slow,  so  that 
the  resources  of  the  exile  were  not  benefited 
as  they  ought  to  have  been  by  the  sacrifice 
of  his  goods. 

Thus  it  came  about  that  Victor  Hugo  took 
up  his  residence  at  Marine  Terrace  in  Jersey, 
with  means  scarcely  adequate  to  maintain 
his  family  in  comfort.  But  his  spirit  was  by 
no  means  broken,  and  his  wife  did  not  lack 
the  courage  to  brave  adversity.  Bruised  he 
was,  but  not  shattered;  and  he  nerved  him- 
self to  reconstruct  the  edifice  of  his  lif  e  which 
had  been  struck  down  by  this  sudden  and  un 
expected  blow.  Undaunted  by  disaster,  he 


VICTOR   HUGO  8  BEDROOM   AT  MARINE   TERRACE. 
(From  a  Sketch  by  Charles  Hugo.) 


nounce  the  sale  in  a  short  article  in  La  Presse, 
indulging  the  hope  that  a  subscription  might 
be  raised  to  secure  the  property  for  its  own- 
er. But  his  appeal,  bold  as  it  was,  found  no 
response;  for  who  could  be  expected  in  1852 
to  allow  his  name  openly  to  be  associated 
with  such  a  project? 

The  apartments  in  the  Rue  de  La  Tour 
d'Auvergne  had  been  furnished  according  to 
the  poet's  own  taste,  and  were  crammed  with 
artistic  curiosities.  Besides  the  numerous 
trinkets  that  he  had  picked  up  in  the  old 
parts  of  Paris,  there  were  shelves  full  of  old 
china,  ornaments  of  carved  ivory,  and  some 
choice  specimens  of  Venetian  glass.  These 
articles,  although  of  great  value  to  their 
owner,  sold  for  next  to  nothing.  After  the 


braced  himself  up  to  the  work  which  was  not 
yet  finished. 

Not  only  did  his  brethren  in  exile  give 
him  an  enthusiastic  welcome  to  Jersey,  but 
the  residents  themselves  were  desirous  of 
showing  him  all  respect ;  and  in  one  of 
their  newspapers  they  announced  his  arrival 
in  the  island,  speaking  of  him  in  their  own 
curious  dialect  as  "  un  de  nos  muses  les  plus 
ditttingues. " 

Gratified  at  his  reception,  he  proceeded  to 
furnish  his  house  with  the  simplicity  that  his 
narrow  means  necessitated.  It  contained  a 
considerable  number  of  rooms,  which  have, 
for  the  most  part,  been  reproduced  by  Au- 
guste  Vacquerie,  who  voluntarily  shared  the 
banishment  of  one  whom  he  considered  his 


174 


VICTOR  UUOO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


master,  and  by  whom  he  was  treated  as  a 
son.  Auguste  employed  his  leisure  in  pho- 
tographing the  places  and  the  people  about 
him,  and  sent  a  book,  which  he  called  "  Pro- 
fils  et  Grimaces,"  to  Madame  Paul  Meurice, 
which  we  have  had  the  pleasure  of  inspect- 
ing. A  few  examples  of  these,  and  a  speci- 
men of  Charles  Hugo's  drawing,  are  intro- 
duced into  the  adjacent  pages. 

The  bedroom  of  the  poet  contained  little 
besides  the  bedstead  and  a  table,  but  it  over- 
looked the  sea,  and  the  sea  was  ever  a  source 
of  delight  and  inspiration  to  him. 

The  habits  of  the  little  household  were 
regular  and  industrious.  Victor  Hugo's  usu- 


THE  GREENHOUSE  AT  MARINE  TERRACE. 

al  custom  was  to  rise  at  daybreak,  and  work 
steadily  on  until  midday.  After  luncheon 
most  of  the  party  took  a  walk,  Madame  Vic- 
tor Hugo  retiring  to  rest  in  a  sheltered  con- 
servatory that  was  almost  the  sole  ornament 
of  the  place.  On  returning  from  their  walk, 
during  which  they  would  frequently  bathe, 
the  gentlemen  amused  themselves  with  fenc- 
ing or  billiards,  and  then  went  back  to  their 
own  rooms  to  resume  their  work.  Except 
that  they  were  expatriated,  they  were  not  lack- 
ing in  all  the  resources  for  a  happy  existence. 


It  was  not  the  custom  of  the  people  of 
Jersey  to  quit  their  houses  on  Sundays;  and 
the  exiles,  in  order  to  find  recreation  after 
the  brain-work  of  the  week,  used  to  play  bil- 
liards, taking  care,  however,  always  to  draw 
down  their  blinds,  and  to  strike  the  balls  as 
noiselessly  as  they  could,  so  as  to  avoid 
shocking  the  susceptibilities  of  the  residents. 
The  grand  secret,  however,  as  Victor  Hugo 
has  himself  recorded  in  his  jocose  way,  of 
his  being  treated  with  so  much  respect  by 
the  islanders  was  not  in  the  least  because  he 
was  Victor  Hugo  the  poet,  but  because  he 
was  a  peer  of  France.  By  virtue  of  this 
rank,  as  Gustave  Rivet  says  in  his  "Victor 
Hugo  chez  lui,"  he  enjoyed  certain  privi- 
leges, one  of  which  was  that  he  was  ex- 
empt from  the  obligation  of  sweeping  his 
doorstep  and  cleaning  away  the  grass  from 
the  front  of  his  house.  On  the  other 
hand,  he  was  bound  to  supply  the  suze- 
rain of  the  duchy  of  Normandy  witli  two 
fowls  every  year,  the  price  of  which  trib- 
ute the  tax-gatherer  never  failed  to  de- 
mand. The  residents  always  addressed 
the  "  muse  distingue"  as  "My  Lord, "and 
even  the  governor  of  the  island  regarded 
him  as  being  of  a  rank  superior  to  him- 
self. 

Into  company  the  Hugo  family  entered 
very  little;  not  only  had  they  very  limited 
time  at  their  disposal  for  visiting,  but  they 
did  not  quite  understand  the  stiffness  of 
English  society.  When  occasionally  they 
went  through  the  ordeal  of  a  formal  call, 
Madame  Victor  Hugo  used  to  say  to  her 
son  Charles, who  was  somewhat  particular 
in  his  dress,  "You  go  first;  you  are  the 
dandy  of  the  party, "  and  Charles  would 
gravely  take  the  precedence,  followed  by 
his  parents  and  his  brother. 

But  although  Victor  Hugo  did  not  asso- 
ciate much  with  the  residents,  he  found 
more  than  enough  society  for  his  scanty 
leisure  in  the  visits  of  the  various  refu- 
gees, Schrelcher,  Pierre  Leroux,  General  Mes- 
zaros,  General  Percsel,  General  Lefld,  Sandor 
Teleki,  Mezaise,  Theophile  Guerin,  Barbier, 
Bonnet-Duverdier,  Kesler,  Emile  Allix,  and 
Xavier  Derrieu.  His  own  immediate  circle 
included  Vacquerie,  Paul  Meurice,  Ribey- 
rolles,  and  others  who  were  bound  to  him 
by  every  tie  of  affection. 

He  never  complained.  Disdainful  of  all 
calumny  and  insult,  he  resigned  himself  to 
his  fate.  Work  was  the  law  of  his  life ;  he 
watched  the  sun  and  the  sea,  and,  ' '  while  he 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


175 


contemplated  the  unceasing  surging  of  the 
waves,  he  meditated  on  the  perpetual  strug- 
gles of  imposture  with  the  truth." 

As  a  place  of  residence,  Jersey  was  in  it- 
self delightful;  it  has  been  called  an  idyl  of 
the  sea.  Marine  Terrace  was  close  to  the 
shore,  and  at  the  extreme  end  of  the  town. 
Although  now  included  in  a  suburb,  in  1852 
the  house  stood  quite  alone.  Its  little  gar- 
den sloped  down  to  the  beach,  whence  Vic- 


ing of  the  land  which  he  knew  not  whether 
he  should  see  again. 

"Exile,  see  those  roses 

Wet  with  morning  dew ! 
Each  petal  to  thy  view, 
A  pearly  tear  discloses. 

"Roses  homeward  ever 

Bid  my  memory  glnnce; 
But  May  without  my  France 
Can  May  be  reckou'd  never  !" 


VICTOR    HUGO   AMONG   THE   JERSEY   ROCKS. 


tor  Hugo  often  turned  his  eyes  to  France. 
Whatever  charms  the  land  of  exile  may 
boast,  they  never  can  compensate  for  the  loss 
of  one's  native  shores.  Non  ubi  bene,  non  ibi 
patria.  There  is  «ver  the  unseen  bond  that 
attaches  us  to  the  country  where  we  were 
born. 

Notwithstanding  the  beauty  of  the  scenery, 
the  salubrity  of  the  climate,  and  the  luxuri- 
ance of  the  flowers,  the  poet  was  ever  dream- 


Sometimes  in  the  evening,  as  he  was  con- 
versing with  his  friends  upon  by-gone  times, 
his  eyes  would  fill  with  tears,  and  he  would 
seem  tempted  to  yield  to  despair.  Nor 
was  it  always  friends  that  were  about  him; 
traitors  did  not  fail  to  make  their  way  into 
the  society  of  the  proscribed.  The  French 
government  had  their  spies  in  the  island,  and 
the  apprehension  that  they  were  revealing 
their  secrets  to  their  enemies  was  not  the 


176 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS  TIME. 


least  of  the  trials  that  the  exiles  had  to  en- 
dure. They  were  aware  that  they  were 
under  a  secret  surveillance,  and  that  they 
were  in  perpetual  danger  of  being  entangled 
in  a  snare.  Whatever  letters  they  either 
wrote  or  received  were  all  opened  on  the 
frontier. 

They  lived,  indeed,  upon  a  free  soil,  but 
that  soil  was  under  the  rule  of  England,  and 
England  acknowledged  the  Emperor  of  the 
French  as  an  ally.  Protected  though  they 
were  by  the  institutions  of  Jersey,  the  refugees 
were  only  too  well  aware  that  treachery  was 
lurking  among  some  of  the  Frenchmen  who 
were  only  pretending  to  be  outlaws  like 
themselves.  The  duplicity  of  one  imperial 
spy,  named  Damascene  Hubert,  was  found 
out  through  the  jealousy  of  a  woman,  and  it 


was  ascertained  that  he  was  in  the  habit  of 
sending  information  to  the  police  in  Paris. 
Those  whom  he  had  been  betraying  formed 
a  resolution  to  have  his  life;  but  when  their 
design  was  communicated  to  Victor  Hugo, 
he  rose  in  the  middle  of  the  night  and  suc- 
ceeded in  diverting  them  from  their  pur- 
pose, and  in  inducing  them  to  have  the  spy 
committed  to  prison.  It  transpired  that  he 
was  in  debt  to  many  of  his  countrymen,  and 
this  formed  a  pretext  for  placing  him  in 
confinement. 

After  he  was  liberated  he  managed  to  sub- 
sist for  a  time  by  the  contributions  of  some 
friends;  but  when  these  failed  he  left  Jer- 
sey. 

It  was  not  to  be  long  before  the  poet  also 
took  his  departure. 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


177 


CHAPTER  XXIV. 

"Les  Chatimeuts." — Editions  of  1853.— Their  Introduction  into  France. — Attitude  of  the  Exiles  in  Jersey. 
— Victor  Hugo's  Funeral  Orations.— Action  of  the  English  Governmeut.— Sir  Robert  Peel.— Ribeyrolles' 
Reply. — L'Homme.— Felix  Pyat's  Letter.— Meeting  at  St.  Ile'lier — Threats. — Denunciation  of  the  Exiles. 
—Victor  Hugo's  Protest. — The  London  Press.— The  Second  Expulsion. 


"LES  CHATIMENTS"  was  published  dur- 
ing the  period  of  the  author's  residence  in 
Jersey. 

Never  had  poet  been  more  inspired  with 
patriotic  indignation.  In  verse  that  burned, 
he  chastised  the  tyrants  who,  for  twenty 
years,  confiscated  France  to  their  own  selfish- 
ness. In  odes,  in  ballads,  in  epics,  in  satires, 
he  smites  the  authors  and  the  accomplices  of 
the  coup  d'etat,  the  cowards  that  bend  their 
knees  to  the  dominant  power,  the  priests  that 
chant  their  Te  Deums  in  honor  of  a  Caesar 
whom  they  despise. 

Sometimes  he  is  full  of  pity  for  the  vic- 
tims of  the  dastardly  aggression,  pouring  out 
his  sympathy  for  those  whom  the  convict- 
ships  were  conveying  to  the  deadly  climates 
of  Cayenne  and  Lambessa,  to  receive  for 
political  offences  the  fate  of  the  worst  of 
felons ;  sometimes  he  sounds  forth  their  vir- 
tues in  brilliant  strophes ;  and  sometimes  he 
rises  into  grandeur  as  he  scourges  the  great 
men  of  the  Second  Empire,  while  at  others 
he  uses  the  lash  of  satire,  and  depicts  them 
all  as  circus  -  grooms  and  mountebanks. 
Page  after  page  seems  to  bind  his 'victim  to 
an  eternal  pillory. 

He  describes  the  Cemetery  of  Montmartre ; 
and,  addressing  the  martyrs  who  had  per- 
ished by  foul  play,  he  inquires  what  was  the 
tenor  of  their  dying  thoughts,  and  proceeds 
to  cry: 

"Ye  dead,  ye  dead  whom  nought  from  cruel  death 

could  save, 

What  now  detains  you  half  outside  the  silent  grave? 
Here,  when  the  dark  sepulchral  cypress  mournful 

sighs, 

Why  start  ye  forth  on  heaven  to  fix  your  eager  eyes? 
'Twonld  almost  seem  ye  hear  the  judgment  clarion 

ring, 

That  doth  Napoleon  to  the  dread  tribunal  bring; 
And  while  before  the  bar  the  perjnr'd  despot  stands, 
Ye  rise  to  witness  to  the  blood  that  stains  his  hands." 

The  collection  is  divided  into  seven  books, 

the  separate  titles  of  which,  with  cutting 

irony,  represent  the  various  phases  of  the 

coup  d'etat.     They  are:  "Society  is  Saved," 

12 


"Order  is  Re-established,"  "The  Dynasty 
is  Restored,"  "Religion  is  Glorified,"  "Au- 
thority is  Consecrated,"  "Stability  is  As- 
sured," "The  Deliverers  will  Deliver  Them- 
selves." The  poet  has  no  mercy  for  the 
guilty,  and  heaps  upon  them  his  heaviest 
malediction,  and  then  proceeds,  in  a  vision 
of  the  constant  advance  of  humanity,  to  pour 
forth  his  aspirations  for  a  happier  future. 
Full  of  indignation,  he  pleads  the  cause  of  a 
great  people  which,  though  blinded  for  a 
time,  would  ultimately  reassert  its  power. 
And  it  has  been  remarked  that  while  such  a 
voice  was  making  itself  heard,  nothing  could 
be  considered  as  irrevocably  lost;  it  reani- 
mated the  people's  courage,  and  kept  their 
consciences  alive. 

The  first  edition,  which  was  published  in 
Brussels  in  1853,  by  Henri  Samuel,  appeared 
in  a  mutilated  form,  the  Belgian  government 
having  refused  to  allow  the  circulation  of  a 
certain  number  of  the  pieces.  The  author 
protested  against  what  he  held  to  be  an  in- 
fringement of  liberty,  and  declared  that  it 
would  be  an  astonishment  to  the  future  that 
any  country  that  was  the  asylum  of  the  pro- 
scribed could  proceed  to  such  an  arbitrary 
measure. 

Quite  inexplicable  is  the  awe  with  which 
the  emperor  managed  to  inspire  his  neigh- 
bors. It  resulted  inevitably  that  in  their  de- 
sire to  please  him  they  violated  their  own 
constitutions. 

The  second  edition,  revised  and  corrected 
by  Victor  Hugo  himself,  was  published  at 
St.  Helier  in  the  same  year,  and  contains  the 
portions  that  were  excluded  from  the  Brus- 
sels edition.  It  was  sold  both  in  Geneva 
and  in  New  York,  and  received  a  highly 
favorable  notice  in  the  Illustrated  London 
News.  In  spite  of  all  exertions  on  the  part 
of  the  police,  it  achieved  an  almost  universal 
circulation ;  indeed,  the  more  it  was  hunted 
down,  the  more  thoroughly  it  penetrated 
France.  It  had  as  many  disguises  as  an  out- 
law. Sometimes  it  was  enclosed  in  a  sar- 


178 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  111*   7 7. I/A1. 


dine-box,  or  rolled  up  in  a  hank  of  wool; 
sometimes  it  crossed  the  frontier  entire, 
sometimes  in  fragments;  concealed  occa- 
sionally in  plaster  busts  or  clocks,  laid  in  the 
folds  of  ladies'  dresses,  or  even  sewed  in  be- 
tween the  double  soles  of  men's  boots. 

But,  however  keen  was  the  search,  and 
even  though  the  fishermen's  heaps  of  rniick 
were  overhauled,  innumerable  copies  found 
their  way  into  Paris,  to  the  no  slight  dis- 
comfiture of  Napoleon  the  Little.  Into 
workshops,  into  cafes,  into  the  Quartier 
Latin,  and  into  the  Faubourg  St.  Antoine, 
behind  shop-counters,  and  into  salons,  ' '  Les 
Chfitiments  "  made  its  way,  and  only  rarely 
did  a  copy  find  itself  in  the  hands  of  the 
police. 

Perfect  in  its  expression,  this  chef-d'oeuvre 
has  justice  and  progress  for  its  theme,  and 
by  its  combination  of  beauty  and  truth 
reaches  the  very  ideal  of  art.  To  such  as 
objected  that  history  would  very  likely  not 
bear  out  his  judgment  of  the  Second  Em- 
pire, Victor  Hugo  replied  that  the  wrath  of 
a  prophet  who  does  not  roar  against  lions, 
but  who  inveighs  against  tyrants,  can  never 
miscarry.  It  is  panegyric  that  misses  its 
mark.  Horace  and  Virgil  were  deceived 
about  Augustus,  and  Pliny  was  deceived 
about  Trajan;  but  Isaiah  and  Ezekiel  made 
no  mistake  about  the  monarchs  of  Egypt, 
nor  Dante  about  the  popes,  nor  Tacitus 
about  Tiberius,  nor  Juvenal  about  Nero. 

Neither  was  Victor  Hugo  deceived  in  his 
judgment  of  Napoleon.  The  gentle  poet  of 
childhood  and  womanhood,  the  lover  who 
had  drawn  his  inspirations  from  nature  in 
her  sweetest  moods,  was  now  transformed 
into  a  merciless  avenger,  and  his  new  temper 
found  an  echo  in  every  heart  that  owned  any 
sense  of  justice  or  of  pride. 

Although  a  great  many  copies  of  "Les 
Chfitiments  "  were  sold  in  Jersey  as  well  as 
in  Brussels,  the  author  derived  no  more  profit 
than  he  did  from  the  works  he  had  written 
in  Belgium.  The  printing  had  cost  him 
2500  francs,  and  he  did  not  even  pay  his  ex- 
penses; moreover,  he  lost  a  lawsuit  in  which 
he  engaged  at  the  instigation  of  Victor 
Schoelcher,  who  was  incensed  at  the  infringe- 
ment of  copyright. 

But,  if  the  book  brought  pecuniary  profit 
to  the  booksellers  only,  it  accomplished  a 
higher  purpose  hi  kindling  men's  consciences 
to  energy  and  right. 

Nothing  could  be  a  surer  proof  of  the  ter- 
ror that  the  work  inspired  than  the  precau- 


tions which  were  taken  to  suppress  it;  and 
Napuleon  felt  so  uneasy  at  the  proximity  of 
Victor  Hugo  that  he  endeavored  to  have  him 
hunted  out  of  Jersey,  and  before  long  suc- 
ceeded in  attaining  his  end. 

From  their  island  refuge  the  exiles  con- 
tinued to  issue  their  protests,  and  on  all  re 
publican  anniversaries  they  made  speeches 
which  were  regularly  reported  in  the  foreign 
journals.  Until  1855  their  proceedings  at- 
tracted no  particular  notice  in  England,  and 
they  lived  peaceably  in  the  enjoyment  of 
their  privileges. 

Whenever  a  French  exile  died,  his  coun- 
trymen would  assemble  at  the  Cemetery  of 
St.  Jean,  and  Victor  Hugo  most  frequently 
would  be  the  orator  to  commemorate  the  vir- 
tues of  the  departed.  Thus  he  delivered  the 
funeral  harangue  over  Jean  Bousquet,  an  ac- 
tive soldier  of  the  democracy,  who  died  at 
the  age  of  thirty-four,  broken-hearted  at  his 
estrangement  from  his  country.  In  the 
course  of  his  speech  he  declared  that  when- 
ever the  expatriated  republicans  should  re- 
turn to  France  they  would  ask  no  vengeance, 
and  that  no  drop  of  blood  should  be  shed  in 
retaliation  of  their  wrongs.  For  himself,  he 
required  no  recompense  but  the  deliverance 
of  the  oppressed  and  the  enfranchisement  of 
humanity. 

Three  months  later,  in  the  same  cemetery, 
he  made  an  oration  at  the  obsequies  of  Louise 
Julien,  a  brave  woman  of  the  people,  who 
was  hunted,  imprisoned,  and  as  good  as  slain 
by  Napoleon,  for  no  other  reason  than  her 
fidelity  to  her  principles.  From  her  tomb, 
he  said,  rose  the  heart-rending  cry  of  human- 
ity that  made  the  crowned  criminal  turn 
pale  upon  his  throne;  and  while  he  lauded 
the  self-sacrifice  of  those  who  associated 
themselves  with  the  people's  sufferings,  he 
demanded  the  benefits  of  a  free  education 
for  the  masses,  schools  and  workshops,  and 
all  the  apparatus  of  civilization. 

Again,  when  Felix  Bony,  another  victim 
to  banishment,  died  (in  1854),  Victor  Hugo 
stood  beside  the  grave,  and  maintained  that 
the  funeral  processions  of  the  exiles  were  a 
credential  of  the  advance  of  liberty;  and  he 
took  occasion  to  refer  to  the  condition  to 
which  Europe  had  been  brought  by  the  war 
in  the  East,  describing  the  tortures  endured 
by  soldiers  simply  through  lack  of  foresight 
and  care. 

Noble  and  brave  as  these  protests  were, 
they  had  no  effect  in  rousing  the  feelings  of 
the  British  government — generally  so  active 


LE8  CHATIMENTS. 


180 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  IHS   TIME. 


in  defence  of  freedom.  But,  before  long,  an 
incident  that  could  hardly  be  foreseen  result- 
ed in  the  withdrawal  of  the  exiles'  right  of 
asylum  in  Jersey. 

After  the  colony  of  refugees  had  been  resi- 
dent in  the  island  for  nearly  three  years  and 
a  half,  Felix  Pyat,  having  chosen  London  for 
his  retreat,  wrote  a  paper  upon  the  subject 
of  Queen  Victoria's  visit  to  France,  which 
he  read  at  a  public  meeting  without  incur- 
ring any  objection  or  remonstrance.  But 
the  paper  used  strong  language  about  the 
Emperor;  and  the  English  government,  hav- 
ing concluded  that  Napoleon  would  be  a  use- 
ful ally,  determined  to  allow  no  insult  to  be 
offered  to  his  name. 

Already,  in  1854,  Sir  Robert  Peel,  forget- 
ful of  the  indignation  that  had  been  ex- 
pressed in  England  at  the  coup  d'etat,  had 
said,  in  reference  to  the  oration  delivered  at 
Bony's  funeral : 

"One  individual  there  is  who  has  a  kind 
of  personal  quarrel  against  the  distinguished 
personage  that  the  French  nation  has  chosen 
as  its  sovereign.  That  individual  has  told 
the  people  of  Jersey  that  our  alliance  with 
the  Emperor  of  the  French  is  a  degradation 
to  our  country.  In  what  way  is  this  a  mat- 
ter of  concern  to  M.  Victor  Hugo?  If  our 
people  are  to  hear  this  kind  of  nonsense  from 
those  who  betake  themselves  for  refuge  to 
our  borders,  I  shall  deem  it  my  duty  to  ask 
the  Home  Secretary  to  put  an  end  to  it  as 
soon  as  possible." 

It  was  an  open  threat,  and  it  called  forth  a 
sharp  response.  The  French  newspaper  in 
Jersey  was  L'Homme.  It  was  under  the 
charge  of  various  exiled  journalists — Jules 
Cahaigne,  Philippe  Favre,  Esquiros,  Etienne 
Arago,  and  others— the  ostensible  editor  being 
Ribeyrolles,  a  man  of  vigorous  intellect,  who 
took  a  leading  part  in  the  political  contro- 
versies of  the  time.*  In  answer  to  Sir  Rob- 
ert, he  inserted  an  article  in  his  paper  asking 
whether  England  intended  to  allow  herself 
to  be  led  astray  by  fear,  to  associate  herself 
with  crime,  and  to  hunt  down  the  oppressed. 
If  it  were  so,  and  they  were  driven  from  their 
re  treat,  the  cry  that  would  go  up  from  the  ship 
that  bore  them  to  their  second  exile  would  be 
the  cry  that  "England  is  England  no  longer." 

Victor  Hugo  likewise  made  his  sentiments 
known: 

"I  warn  M.  Bonaparte  that  I  am  aware 


•  M.  Ribeyrolles  died  some  years  afterwards  in  ex- 
ile in  Brazil. 


of  the  secret  springs  he  has  set  in  motion, 
and  I  am  aware  of  what  has  been  said  about 
me  in  the  British  Parliament.  M.  Bona- 
parte has  driven  me  from  France  because  I 
have  acted  on  my  rights  as  a  citizen,  and  as 
a  representative  of  the  people;  he  has  driven 
me  from  Belgium  because  I  have  written 
'Napoleon  the  Little,'  and  he  will  probably 
drive  me  from  England  because  of  the  pro- 
tests that  I  have  made  and  shall  continue  to 
make.  Be  it  so.  That  concerns  England 
more  than  it  concerns  me.  America  is  open 
to  me,  and  America  is  sufficiently  after  my 
heart.  But  I  warn  him  that  whether  it  be 
from  France,  from  Belgium,  from  England, 
or  from  America,  my  voice  shall  never  cease 
to  declare  that  sooner  or  later  he  will  have  to 
expiate  the  crime  of  the  2d  of  December. 
What  is  said  is  true:  there  is  a  personal 
quarrel  between  him  and  me;  there  is  the 
old  quarrel  of  the  judge  upon  the  bench  and 
the  prisoner  at  the  bar." 

No  immediate  action  was  taken  upon  the 
publication  of  this  protest,  but  the  people  of 
England,  as  well  as  the  people  of  Jersey, 
were  beginning  to  think  of  the  advantages 
which  might  accrue  from  an  alliance  with 
the  Emperor,  and  accordingly  turned  against 
the  exiles,  their  irritation  being  inflamed  by 
the  reproduction  in  L'Homme  of  the  paper 
by  Felix  Pyat  which  has  been  mentioned. 

The  paper  was  in  the  form  of  a  letter  to 
Queen  Victoria.  After  congratulating  her 
Majesty  on  her  safe  return  from  the  fdtes  in 
honor  of  the  Crimean  war,  the  author  made 
some  cutting  remarks;  he  reproached  her  for 
visiting  an  upstart  tyrant  and  taking  his 
hand  as  an  ally,  and  by  her  coalition  with 
him.  sacrificing  her  rank  and  her  prfce,  and 
the  dignity  of  her  race  and  sex.  In  conclu- 
sion, he  made  a  joke  about  her  having  put 
Canrobert  au  bain. 

This  harmless  little  pun  was  like  a  spark 
to  powder.  All  Jersey  was  in  arms.  Their 
queen  had  been  accused  of  impropriety;  it 
had  been  insinuated  that  she  had  put  a  man 
into  a  bath! 

In  a  scare  the  police  called  an  indignation 
meeting.  Colored  posters  covered  the  walls, 
of  which  one  may  be  given  as  an  example : 

"INHABITANTS  or  JEHSET, 

natives  or  foreigners, 
all  who  respect  the  sex  to  whom  you  owe  your  being, 

and  of  which 

Queen  Victoria 

is  the  brightest  ornament, 

come  and  attend  a  meeting 

at  the  Queen's  Assembly  Rooms,  to-morrow  evening. 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


181 


TUB  CHIEF-CONSTABLE  OF  ST.  HEI.IEK 

in  the  chair. 

Attend  and  show  your  indignation  at  the  infamous 
libel  published  on  Wednesday  last,  and 

now  sold  in  your  streets. 

The  exiles  whom  you  have  received  with  hospitality 
have  treated  your  Queen  with  insult. 

MEN  OF  JEUSEY, 
your  fathers  distinguished  themselves  by  their 

loyalty. 

Attend  and  show  that  you  have  not 
degenerated." 

This  was  by  no  means  the  most  furious  of 
the  placards ;  others  were  intended  to  stir  up 
the  people  of  St.  Helier  to  much  more  ve- 
hement wrath.  The  agitation,  however, 
was  successful;  and  on  the  evening  of  Satur- 
day, October  13,  the  room  was  crowded  with 
an  angry  multitude  that  must  have  num- 
bered little  short  of  two  thousand. 

In  a  violent  speech,  the  chief-constable 
maintained  that  all  the  exiles  ought  to  be 
held  alike  responsible  for  the  offence ;  and 
an  officer,  Captain  Childers,  amid  much  ap- 
plause, brought  forward  a  motion  that  the 
outlaws  should  be  forthwith  informed  that 
Jersey  was  no  longer  a  place  of  safety  for 
any  of  them.  The  motion  was  carried  by 
acclamation,  and  the  audience,  in  the  highest 
state  of  excitement,  shouted,  ' '  Down  with 
them!"  "Down  with  them!"  "Lynch-law 
them!"  "Hang  them!"  "Down  with  the 
Reds!" 

To  no  purpose  did  a  few  voices  try  to 
make  themselves  heard  in  defence ;  the  mob 
was  furious,  and  rushed  from  the  room  to 
the  printing-offices. 

Charles  Hugo,  in  his  "Les  Hommes  de 
1'Exil,"  has  given  a  detailed  account  of  that 
night  of  commotion.  Had  it  not  been  for  a 
heavy  fall  of  rain  and  for  the  energy  of  a 
policeman,  who  would  not  allow  private 
property  to  be  attacked,  there  would  have 
been  great  risk  of  bloodshed.  The  workmen 
at  the  printing-offices  had  barred  themselves 
in,  prepared  to  make  a  vigorous  defence,  and 
happily  no  blows  were  struck. 

Cheers  were  called  for  at  the  meeting  for 
Queen  Victoria,  for  the  Emperor  of  the 
French,  and  for  the  Empress  Eugenie;  and 
groans  were  given  for  L'Homme,  a  resolution 
being  carried  that  a  newspaper  which  defied 
authority,  backed  up  assassins,  and  aspersed 
the  sovereign  should  be  at  once  suppressed 
as  a  disgrace  to  the  island  and  an  outrage 
upon  hospitality  and  upon  all  Christian  sen- 
timent. 

During  these  proceedings  the  exiles  re- 
mained in  their  homes,  somewhat  uneasy, 


and  Victor  Hugo  was  warned  to  be  on  his 
guard.  But  he  had  no  thought  of  taking*any 
unusual  measures  for  his  protection ;  he  had 
been  accustomed  to  walk  unarmed  upon  the 
beach  by  night  as  well  as  by  day,  and  did 
not  see  that  any  special  precaution  was  need- 
ed now.  His  life,  he  said,  was  of  little  value 
to  him,  but  he  confessed  he  should  be  grieved 
if  his  manuscripts  were  destroyed. 

On  hearing  this,  Preveraud,  one  of  the 
exiles  who  had  been  condemned  to  death  on 
the  3d  of  December,  disguised  himself  as  a 
workman,  bought  a  truck,  and  conveyed 
away  a  strong  iron-bound  chest  to  his  own 
lodgings.  The  chest  contained  the  result  of 
thirty  years'  labors — "Les  Contemplations," 
"  La  Legende  des  Siecles,"  and  the  first  por- 
tion of  "  Les  Miserables." 

The  precaution  was  not  altogether  unnec- 
essary, as  "the  Jersey  vespers,"  as  Charles 
Hugo  expresses  it,  were  being  preached  not 
only  in  the  island,  but  in  London,  and  it  was 
well  to  be  provided  for  every  emergency. 

Victor  Hugo's  friends  were  more  anxious 
for  him  than  he  was  for  himself,  and  The- 
ophile  Guerin,  Hennet  de  Kesler,  and 
Charles  Ribeyrolles  came  to  render  his  sons 
and  Auguste  Vacquerie  any  help  they  could 
in  protecting  his  house.  Asplet,  a  military 
man,  who  had  incurred  the  reproof  of  the 
government,  likewise  came  and  warned  Ma- 
dame Victor  Hugo  of  the  danger;  but  she 
refused  to  quit  her  post,  which,  she  said,  was 
at  her  husband's  side  when  he  was  liable  to 
the  assaults  of  fanatics. 

The  attention  that  was  attracted  in  Eng- 
land was  considerable.  The  Times  of  Octo- 
ber 17  contained  the  following  paragraph: 

"We  have  already  said  enough  about  the 
revolutionists  for  the  public  ear;  but  we 
recommend  M.  Felix  Pyat's  letter  to  Lord 
Palmerston's  careful  perusal.  We  have  rea- 
son to  believe  that  the  prune-minister  has 
already  threatened  these  seditious  persons 
with  transportation. " 

It  did  not  end  with  threats.  On  the  day 
after  the  meeting  the  chief-constable  called 
upon  the  three  persons  who  were  responsible 
for  L'Homme — namely,  Ribeyrolles,  the  edi- 
tor; Pianciani,  the  manager;  and  Thomas,  the 
salesman  of  the  paper — and  informed  them 
that  the  governor  could  no  longer  permit 
their  residence  on  the  island.  Following  the 
example  which  Louis  Napoleon  had  set  with 
the  French  papers,  they  did  not  suppress 
L'Homme  itself,  but  suppressed  the  parties 
that  published  it.  A  week  was  granted 


182 


VICTOR  111' 00  AND   HIS    TIME. 


them  for  their  departure,  but,  without  avail- 
ing themselves  of  ihr  rc-pite.  they  left  the 
island  within  twenty-four  hours. 

The  exiles  wen-  fur  too  intimately  involved 
in  one  another's  proceedings  not  to  feel  them- 
selves all  equally  aggrieved  by  this  violation 
of  English  law.  They  resolved  to  issue  a 


violence  done  to  our  persons  merely  causes 
us  a  smile." 

"But  we  would  not  be  misunderstood. 
This  is  what  we  exiles  from  France  say  to 
you,  the  British  government:  'Your  ally, 
the  puissant  Napoleon  III.,  stands  legally 
accused  of  high -treason.  For  four  years  he 


MADAME  VICTOR  HUGO. 


protest,  and  Victor  Hugo  was  deputed  to 
draw  it  up.  The  general  tenor  of  this  docu- 
ment may  be  understood  by  a  few  extracts: 

"  The  coup  d'etat,"  wrote  the  author, "  has 
penetrated  into  English  liberty.  England 
has  reached  this  point,  that  she  now  ban- 
ishes exiles. " 

t:  Apart  from  the  outrage  upon  right,  the 


has  been  under  a  warrant  signed  by  Har- 
douin,  the  President  of  the  High  Court  of 
Justice,  by  Delaparme,  Pataille,  Moreau,  and 
Cauchy;  and  countersigned  by  Renouard, 
Attorney-general.  He  has  broken  his  oath, 
he  has  violated  the  law,  he  has  imprisoned 
the  representatives  of  the  people,  he  has  ex- 
pelled the  judges.' " 


L^TITIA    REBUM. 


Qui  chante  la?    Le  rossignol. 

Les  chrysalides  sent  parties. 
I,e  ver  de  terre  a  pris  son  vol 

Et  ietti  le  froc  aux  orties. 


Enfants,  dans  vos  yeux  6clatants, 
Je  crois  voir  1'Empyre'e  6clore. 

Vous  riez  comme  le  printemps, 

Et  vous  pleurez  comme  1'aurore. 


184 


VICTOIt  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


"  Treason,  perjury,  spoliation,  and  murder 
are  crimes  that  arc  punishable  under  every 
code  in  the  world :  in  England  by  the  scaffold ; 
in  France,  where  capital  punishment  is  al>ol 
ished,  by  the  galleys.  The  Court  of  Assizes 
bides  its  time  to  arraign  Bonaparte." 

"  This  has  been  our  undeviatiug  opinion; 
for  a  long  time  the  bulk  of  the  English  press 
held  with  us;  our  opinion  remains  what  it 
was. " 

"Expel  us  if  you  will." 

The  protest  was  signed  by  Victor  Hugo 
and  by  thirty-six  others.  The  signature  of 
Victor  Schcelcher  was  sent  from  London, 
with  the  reminder  that  for  eighteen  months 
the  press  in  England  had  been  all  but  unan- 
imous in  calling  Louis  Napoleon  an  assassin. 
Louis  Blanc,  too,  signified  his  concurrence, 
and  expressed  his  indignation  at  the  action 
of  the  English  against  those  whom  they  were 
bound  to  consider  as  their  guests. 

"When  this  document  was  circulated  in 
London,  the  wrath  of  the  citizens  seemed 
only  to  be  aggravated ;  they  appeared  to  be 
almost  jealous  of  the  people  of  Jersey  for 
having  taken  the  initiative,  and  were  now 
most  energetic  in  demanding  the  instant 
punishment  of  the  offenders.  The  Times 
announced  that  a  French  government  vessel 
was  waiting  in  the  harbor  of  Jersey,  ready, 
no  doubt,  to  embark  the  refugees;  other 
newspapers  printed  the  protest  without  mak- 
ing any  comment,  the  Illustrated  London 
Neics  going  to  the  length  of  saying  that  the 
"clique  of  French  ruffians"  were  "miscre- 
ants "  and  "malefactors  of  the  most  heinous 
kind,"  and  that  "  the  fate  of  Pianori,  whom 
they  pretend  to  look  upon  as  a  martyr, 


would  be  no  inappropriate  one  for  them- 
selves." 

The  English  government,  to  say  the  truth, 
seemed  somewhat  embarrassed,  and  no  action 
was  taken  for  a  week;  there  was,  in  fact, 
nothing  definite  to  be  alleged  against  the  ex- 
iles. The  protest  made  no  reference  to  Pyat's 
letter  to  th6  Queen,  it  simply  remonstrated 
against  their  own  expulsion.  But  there  is 
circumstantial  evidence  that  the  French 
government  was  having  its  own  will,  as  in 
the  Moniteur  Officiel  of  Friday,  October 
26,  the  news  of  the  expulsion  of  Victor 
Hugo  was  announced  in  Paris,  while  the  ex- 
iles themselves  received  no  notice  of  the  de- 
cision until  Saturday,  the  27th. 

On  that  day  the  constable  of  St.  Clement 
appeared  at  Victor  Hugo's  door  with  the 
order  of  the  government  that  he  should  quit 
the  island  by  the  2d  of  November.  The  ex- 
ile produced  the  protest,  and,  reading  it  over 
to  the  officer,  insisted  that  not  only  was  it  true, 
but  that  it  contained  nothing  that  exceeded 
the  bounds  of  local  privilege.  He  added : 

"  I  am  ready  to  go.  But  go  you  back  and 
report  yourself  to  your  superior  officer,  the 
lieutenant-governor;  he  will  make  his  report 
to  the  English  government,  and  the  English 
government  in  turn  will  report  to  M.  Bona- 
parte. I  need  hardly  tell  you  that  I  do  not 
await  the  expiration  of  the  respite  that  is  giv- 
en me.  I  hasten  to  quit  a  land  where  honor 
has  no  place,  and  which  burns  my  feet." 

The  other  exiles  received  similar  notices, 
and  prepared  to  leave  their  asylum  in  what 
they  had  hoped  to  find  a  free  country. 
Many  of  them  were  entirely  without  re- 
sources; but  such  is  the  law  of  banishment. 


VIC T OK  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


185 


CHAPTER  XXV. 

Departure  from  Jersey. — Satisfaction  of  the  Bouapartist  Journals. — "Les  Contemplations."— Criticism.*. — 
Opinion  of  the  Revue  des  Deux  Mondes. — Eeception  of  the  Work  in  France. — "  La  Legeude  des  Si^cles." 
— Outline  of  its  Aim. — Correspondence  with  Charles  Baudelaire. 


BEFORE  quitting  Jersey,  the  exiles  paid  a 
farewell  visit  to  the  graves  of  their  fellow- 
countrymen  who  were  buried  in  the  little 
independent  cemetery  of  St.  Jean,  the  resting- 
place  of  such  as  did  not  belong  to  either  of 
the  twenty-seven  places  of  worship  in  the 
island,  and  then  embarked,  some  for  London, 
some  for  Germany,  and  some  for  Guernsey. 

It  was  to  the  last  of  these  that  the  steamer 
conveyed  Victor  Hugo  and  his  family  on  the 
31st  of  October.  He  left  Jersey  with  con- 
siderable regret.  In  spite  of  the  difficulties 
which  had  beset  him,  he  had  become  much 
attached  to  the  spot  which  he  afterwards  de- 
scribed in  "Les  Travailleurs  de  la  Mer"  as 
a  bouquet  as  large  as  London,  and  where  all 
is  perfume,  light,  and  laughter.  In  verse, 
too,  he  has  spoken  of  it  as 

"Sleeping  amid  th'  eternal  thunder  of  the  waves, 
Itself  a  tiny  gem  whose  shores  the  ocean  laves; 
But  though  so  tiny,  still  a  bold  and  rocky  land: 
With  Brittany  below  and  Normandy  at  hand, 
To  us  a  very  France,  with  France's  flowery  smile, 
And  yet  for  us  with  France's  tears  bedewed  awhile." 

But  though  the  exile  was  the  victim  of  the 
machinations  of  the  Empire,  and  some  por- 
tion of  the  English  and  the  Jersey  press  con- 
tributed to  the  vengeance  that  was  exacted, 
Victor  Hugo  himself  has  Joeen  careful  to 
maintain  that  the  great  English  nation  at 
large  (which  he  calls  "majesty  in  upright- 
ness ")  had  no  share  in  the  blame.  He  re- 
joiced in  his  asylum  in  the  island,  which 
was  but  a  fragment  of  Gaul  detached  in  the 
eighth  century,  and  found  there  not  a  few 
warm  admirers. 

Nevertheless,  his  expulsion  gave  rise  to  a 
certain  amount  of  misunderstanding;  there 
were  those  who  deemed  him  responsible  for 
the  severity  exhibited  towards  his  compa- 
triots; but  these  were  only  such  as  failed  to 
comprehend  the  true  greatness  of  the  protest 
which  he  had  published.  In  reality,  the  sym- 
pathies of  the  islanders  are  not  French  at  all ; 
and  in  1870,  during  the  war,  they  congratu- 
lated themselves  on  being  exempt  from  the 


obligation  of  furnishing  military  contingents 
and  supplies.  At  the  time  of  which  we  are 
writing,  a  number  of  the  residents  who  were 
true  Englishmen  at  heart  accompanied  the 
departing  exiles  down  to  the  port,  raised  in 
their  behalf  the  complimentary  shout  "Vive 
la  Republique?"  and  expressed  the  hope  that 
they  might  see  them  back  again  to  reside 
among  them. 

On  the  part  of  those  who  were  driven  to 
migrate  there  was  no  shadow  of  rancor  or 
ill-feeling;  they  had  no  hatred  for  anything 
but  wrong;  they  were  indeed  the  playthings 
of  fortune,  and  the  Bonapartist  journals  in 
Paris  exulted  over  their  discomfiture. 

Meanwhile  the  poet  was  not  confining  his 
efforts  to  the  task  of  political  vengeance; 
during  his  residence  in  Jersey  he  wrote  both 
"Les  Contemplations"  and  the  first  part  of 
"La  Legende  des  Siecles." 

"Les  Contemplations"  was  published  by 
Michel  Levy  and  Pagnerre  in  Paris,  in  May, 
1856.  It  is  in  two  volumes,  and  contains  a 
history  of  twenty-five  years  of  the  author's 
life — the  essence,  he  says,  of  all  that  has  fil- 
tered through  his  experiences  and  sufferings, 
and  deposited  itself  in  the  depths  of  his  heart. 
His  very  soul  speaks  from  its  pages.  In  de- 
scribing himself  he  knows  that  he  is  describ- 
ing others,  because  there  are  joys  and  sor- 
rows, tumults  and  trials,  that  are  common  to 
all  humanity,  and  he  recounts  all  his  recol- 
lections and  impressions,  the  realities  and 
phantoms  of  his  life,  alike  grave  and  gay. 

The  first  volume  bears  the  title  of  ' '  Aulre- 
fcys,"  the  second  that  of  "  Aujourd'hui;" 
the  various  parts  being  respectively  headed 
"Aurore,"  "  L'Ame  en  Fleurs,"  "  Pauca 
mea,"  "En  Marche,"  "  Au  Bord  de  1'Infini." 

Looking  back  upon  the  road  that  he  has 
travelled,  he  reviews  the  history  of  his  ex- 
istence page  by  page.  He  has  reminiscences 
of  his  two  young  daughters, 

"One  like  a  swan,  one  graceful  as  a  dove." 
He  goes  through  the  story  of  his  creed,  and 


186 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  1IIS   TIM  I-:. 


makes  answer  to  his  accusers;  he  relate* 
episodes  of  his  early  love  and  of  the  days  in 
the  garden  of  the  Feuillantines ;  he  dedicates 
hi-  reveries  to  1 1 is  friends  Auguste  Vacquerie, 
Alexandra  Dumas,  and  Paul  Meurice,  and 
that  upon  his  drama  "Paris"  to  Froment 
Mender;  he  deplores  the  daughter  he  had 
]o>t.  addiv— inir  her  in  words  of  tenderness, 
and  dwelling  on  the  devotion  of  her  husband. 

"Their  souls  conversed  beneath  the  rushing  wave; 
'\\'h:it  doi-iit  tlu»u?'she  cried,  'thon  canst  nut  save!' 

•  With  thee  I  die,'  he  ever  constant  cried : 
And  thus  in  locked  embrace  their  hands  they  keep, 
Sinking  together  in  the  current  deep: 

Ah  !  Mill  we  hear  the  inoauiugs  of  the  tide  ! 

"  Yes,  thon  wast  good,  and  to  thy  pledges  tipe, 
Her  husband  thon,  her  ardent  lover  too, 

Deserving  nil  the  love  of  thy  sweet  bride ! 
Upon  the  sculptured  tablet  o'er  thee  laid, 
Tli'  Eternal  Godhead  ever  casts  his  shade  ; 

Then  sleep,  my  eon,  e'er  at  my  daughter's  side." 

Besides  the  problems  of  life  that  are  dis- 
eu-x-d,  '•from  the  complaint  of  a  blade  of 
grass  to  a  father's  sob,"  there  is  a  large  por- 
tion of  "Les  Contemplations"  devoted  to 
literary  and  political  polemics  as  well  as  to 
philosophy.  The  poetry  of  the  inner  soul  is 
simple,  true,  and  touching;  it  penetrates  to 
the  heart,  and  while  it  instructs  it  never  fails 
to  -ooihe  and  comfort. 

Only  courageous  critics  ventured  to  praise 
the  book.  In  the  Revue  dcs  Deux  Mondes 
Gustave  Planche  again  came  forward,  his 
spleen  by  no  means  diminished  by  the  lapse 
of  time;  he  allowed  that  the  sentimental 
verses  might  be  all  well  enough,  but  pro- 
nounced the  philosophical  only  fitted  to  pro- 
voke the  smile  of  contempt;  and  he  professed 
himself  quite  unable  to  regard  Victor  Hugo's 
attempts  at  reasoning  in  a  serious  light  at 
all.  In  his  opinion,  whenever  the  poet  left 
his  personal  experiences  and  ventured  to 
touch  upon  the  origin  of  things,  upon  the 
destiny  of  man,  his  duties  or  his  rights,  and 
the  chastisements  that  were  due  to  his  delin- 
quencies, he  became  childish,  and  uttered 
what  probably  would  be  amusing  if  only  it 
were  expressed  in  plainer  language,  so  as  to 
get  rid  of  its  obscurity.  The  critic  added 
that,  although  he  had  no  right  to  be  surprised 
at  poetical  caprice,  he  thought  it  astonishing 
that  there  should  be  such  an  utter  absence 
of  all  knowledge  of  eternal  truths.  Planche 
was  blinded  by  his  antipathy  to  the  author, 
for  nothing  could  be  more  generous  or  more 
elevated  than  the  philosophy  that  pervades 
the  whole  of  the  volumes,  which  in  spite  of 
unscrupulous  attack  made  their  way  to  con- 


siderable appreciation.  No  fault  was  now 
found,  in  any  quarter,  with  the  poet's  style, 
and  his  genius  was  admitted  to  be  asserting 
itself  more  and  more  completely. 

"Lcs  Contemplations  "  went  through  nu- 
merous editions.     Borne  down  though  she 
was  by  the  weight  of  despotism,  France  re- 
vived at  the   perusal   of  the  verses  of  her 
ardent  poet;  envy  might  try  to  put  its  finger 
on  them  all,  but  it  was  only  a  debased  and  a 
|  prejudiced  mind  that  was  not  constrained  to 
I  find  much  to  applaud,  and  that  did  not  listen 
I  with  admiration  to  the  voice  of  power  that 
sent  forth  its  cry  from  the  place  of  exile. 

Among  those  who  were  remarkable  for 
the  expression  of  their  gratification  at  the 
appearance  of  the  book  was  Jules  Jauin,  who 
throughout  the  continuance  of  the  Empire 
lost  no  opportunity  of  displaying  his  respect 
for  the  banished  author.  Victor  Hugo  sent 
him  a  handsome  copy  of  the  book,  contain- 
ing a  drawing  in  sepia,  done  by  his  own  hand, 
accompanied  by  an  autograph  letter  four 
pages  long.  The  volume  was  sold  at  Jules 
Janin's  sale  for  1000  francs.  Three  years 
later  the  brilliant  critic  received  from  the  au- 
thor one  of  the  earliest  copies  of  "  La  Le- 
gende  des  Si&cles,"  with  a  dedication  and  a 
colored  frontispiece,  that  was  sold  for  635 
francs. 

AVe  may  here  add  a  few  words  respect- 
ing "La  Legende  des  Siecles,"  of  which  the 
fir-1  part  (in  two  volumes)  completes  Victor 
Hugo's  lyrical  works  in  the  early  years  of 
his  exile.  It  was  published  by  Michel  Levy 
in  Paris,  in  1859,  and  was  issued  bearing  the 
inscription — 

"The  winds,  my  book,  shall  thee  convey 

Back  to  my  native  shores  ! 
The  tree  uprooted  from  the  soil 
A  faded  leaf  restores." 

And  yet  the  leaf  was  not  faded  in  the  least ; 
the  tree  had  never  been  in  greater  vigor,  and 
never  had  thrown  out  more  splendid  branches. 
Again  was  the  acknowledgment  forced  from 
the  general  judgment  that  the  pages  now 
issued  were  comparable  to  any  that  had  ever 
seen  the  light  before. 

In  this  gigantic  work  the  poet,  with  his 
incessant  yearning  towards  great  concep- 
tions, has  formed  the  design  of  writing  an 
entire  history  of  the  human  race  by  select- 
ing striking  and  typical  epochs  so  as  to 
indicate,  in  tracing  out  the  ages  in  their  or- 
der, the  various  changes  in  the  physiognomy 
of  nations,  downward  from  the  era  of  Eve, 
the  mother  of  men,  to  the  dawn  of  Revolu- 


THE  JERSEY  ROCKS. 


188 


VI ('Tint  HUGO  AND  HIS  TI.MK. 


lion,  the  mother  of  peoples.     He  thus  de- 
scribes hi-  own  aim: 

"To  display  humanity  in  a  kind  of  cyclic 
work;  to  depict  it  successively  and  simul- 
taneously in  all  its  a-pc»-ts,  historical,  fabu- 
lous, philosophical,  religious,  and  scientific, 
all  of  which  unite  in  one  vast  ascending 
movement  towards  the  light;  to  represent  as 
it  were  in  a  mirror  the  one  great  figure,  single 
and  multiplied,  gloomy  and  cheerful,  fatal 
and  sacred.  .Man:  this  i>  the  idea,  this  perhap- 
the  ambition,  that  has  been  the  origin  of  'La 
Legende  des  Siecles.' 


programme,  Victor  Hugo  has  depicted  some 
salient  point  in  each  of  the  great  epochs — 
Kiblical  antiquity,  the  age  of  chivalry,  medi- 
a'val  life,  and  the  modern  era. 

Biblical  antiquity  is  represented  by  three 
great  poems — "Le  Sacre  de  la  Feninu  .  re- 
counting the  marvels  of  creation  and  the  pure 
joys  of  Paradise ;  "La  Conscience, "in  which 
the  punishment  of  sin  is  depicted  in  gloomy 
coloring  worthy  of  Dante;  and  "La  Premi- 
ere Rencontre  du  Christ  avec  le  Tom  beau. "  an 
episode  which,  if  not  actually  derived  from 
the  Gospel,  is  inspired  by  the  sacred  page. 


JE ANNIE  ("LA  LEGENDE  DES  SIECLES.") 
(From  a  Di-awing  by  Victor  Huyo.) 


"The  development  of  the  human  race 
from  age  to  age;  man  rising  from  darkness 
to  the  ideal;  a  transfiguration  of  Paradise 
from  a  terrestrial  hell ;  the  gradual  unfolding 
of  liberty;  right  for  this  life,  responsibility 
as  regards  the  next ;  a  hymn  of  a  thousand 
strophes  with  sincere  faith  in  its  inmost 
depths  and  a  lofty  prayer  on  its  topmost 
heights;  the  drama  of  creation  irradiated  by 
the  countenance  of  the  Creator:  this  is  the 
outline  of  what  the  poem  aspires  to  be." 

In  accordance  with   this  comprehensive 


Passing  on  to  the  legends  of  the  North, 
side  by  side  with  Cain  he  places  Canute,  the 
parricide,  who  wanders  eternally  through 
the  darkness  of  night  wrapped  in  a  mantle 
of  snow,  upon  which  there  falls  incessantly 
a  trickling  drop  of  blood. 

The  conceptions  are  independent  of  all 
epic  framework,  and,  taken  altogether,  "La 
Legende  des  Siecles"  may  be  ranked  with 
the  very  finest  and  most  complete  of  all 
Victor  Hugo's  poems.  Whether  he  calls 
forth  Androcles's  lion,  or  speaks  of  the  cedar 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


189- 


which  at  Omer's  order  covers  Jean  with  its 
shade,  he  takes  his  flight  through  time  and 
space,  ever  gifted  with  supernatural  power 
of  thought;  and  even  when  he  pauses  to 
sympathize  with  les  pauvres  gens,  to  weep 
with  Jeannie,  the  poor  fisherman's  wife,  he 
pours  forth  his  thoughts  in  such  exquisite 
pathos  that  his  master  skill  is  felt  to  be  un- 
rivalled. 

It  may  easily  be  imagined  how  great  a 
sensation  the  appearance  of  the  volume 
produced  in  France.  All  the  poets  of  the 


'  La  Legende  des  Siecles '  seems  wonderful. 
Your  letter  throughout  is  stamped  with  your 
sincere  heart  and  deep  intellect.  The  more 
you  read  what  I  have  written,  the  more  I 
believe  you  will  find  that  we  are  of  the  same 
mind,  advancing  with  the  same  steps  to  the 
same  end.  Let  us  rally  beneath  the  one 
ideal ;  let  us  make  for  the  one  goal  to  which 
mankind  directs  the  double  and  eternal  effort ; 
let  us  be  true  to  art  and  progress!" 

The  correspondence  did  not  end  here.    Bau  - 
delaire  wrote  again,  promising  to  send  his 


THE  CEDAR  ("LA  LEGENDE  DES  SIECLES.' 


country  wrote  to  the  author  to  express  their 
admiration  of  his  work;  and  as  it  was  then 
as  ever  Victor  Hugo's  habit  not  to  allow  a 
letter  of  any  sort  to  be  unanswered,  he  was 
brought  afresh  into  correspondence  with  all 
the  literary  men  of  the  day. 

Among  others,  he  exchanged  notes  with 
Charles  Baudelaire,  the  author  of  "Les 
Fleurs  du  Mai."  Baudelaire  had  told  him 
how  much  he  admired  his  production;  and 
in  reply  Victor  Hugo  wrote : 

"  Thanks,  poet.     To  me  what  you  say  of 


translation  of  Edgar  Poe,  and  begging  Victor 
Hugo  not  to  read  any  other  copy  beforehand, 
as  there  were  certain  corrections  to  be  made. 

Victor  Hugo  replied : 

' '  Rest  assured  I  will  wait.  I  understand 
all  you  feel ;  I  have  had  no  less  than  eleven 
revisions  of  'La  Legende  des  Siecles, 'all 
for  the  sake  of  a  few  commas. " 

These  confidences  are  interesting,  inasmuch 
as  they  testify  to  the  care  bestowed  by  great 
artists  upon  their  works,  which  in  their  esti 
mation  are  never  perfect. 


190 


lll'GO  AND  JUS   TIME. 


CHAPTER   XXVI. 

Guernsey.— Hnntcville  House.— The  Oak  Gallery.— Garibaldi's  Chamber — The  Study.— Family  Pursuits — 
Pets.— "Les  Mis6r«bles."— Lnmnrtiiie  and  his  "fours  de  LitteYature. "—Letter  from  Victor  llugo.— 
Dinuers  to  Poor  Children Bauquet  iu  Brussels.—  M.  Greuier's  Criticism. 


BETWEEN  the  people  of  Jersey  and  the  peo- 
ple of  Guernsey  there  has  long  been  a  sort  of 
antipathy;  it  would  almost  seem  as  if  the  ex- 
pulsion of  the  exiles  from  the  one  island  gave 
them  a  claim  upon  the  generosity  of  the 
other,  and  they  received  a  warm  welcome 
upon  their  arrival  at  Peterport. 

Opportunely  Victor  Hugo  found  that  there 
was  a  large  and  convenient  residence  to  let, 
which  he  lost  no  time  in  securing.  It  was 
known  as  Hauteville  House.  For  nine  years 
it  had  been  standing  empty.  Report  said  that 
a  woman  had  been  killed  there,  and  that  her 
ghost  haunted  the  place  every  night;  the  con- 
sequence was  that  no  one  ventured  to  occu- 
py it.  But  the  ghost  story  had  no  terrors 
for  the  poet,  and  he  not  only  took  possession 
of  the  house,  but  proceeded  to  improve  it 
by  enlarging  the  rooms,  decorating  them  ac- 
cording to  his  fancy,  and  leaving  his  mark, 
according  to  his  wont,  upon  all  its  surround- 
ings. 

The  re-arrangement,  which  was  quite  an 
occupation  for  leisure  hours,  was  not  com- 
pleted at  once,  but  occupied  not  less  than 
three  years ;  and  Victor  Hugo  referred  to  the 
interest  which  he  took  in  his  new  abode  in 
a  letter  which  he  wrote  to  Jules  Janin,  and 
which  has  hitherto  been  unpublished : 

"You  may  fancy  me  as  doing  little  less 
than  building  a  house.  I  have  no  longer  a 
country,  but  I  want  a  home. 

"England  has  hardly  been  a  better  guard- 
ian of  my  fireside  than  France.  My  poor 
fireside!  France  broke  it  up,  Belgium  broke 
it  up,  Jersey  broke  it  up ;  and  now  I  am  be- 
ginning with  all  the  patience  of  an  ant  to 
build  it  up  anew.  If  ever  I  am  driven  away 
again,  I  shall  turn  to  England,  and  see 
whether  that  worthy  prude  Albion  can  help 
me  to  find  myself  at  home. 

"The  curious  thing  about  all  my  move- 
ments is  that  it  is  literature  that  is  enabling 
me  to  defray  all  the  expenses  of  my  political 
experiences. 

"I  have  taken  a  house  in  Guernsey.     It 


has  three  stories,  a  flat  roof,  a  fine  flight  of 
steps,  a  court-yard,  a  crypt,  and  a  lookout ; 
but  it  is  all  being  paid  for  by  the  proceeds  of 
'  Les  Contemplations. ' 

"  '  Les  Contemplations '  it  is  that  gives  me 
my  roof  over  my  head ;  and  when  you  have 
time  to  spare  to  take  from  yourself  and  to 
devote  to  us,  you  must  come  and  see  us. 
You  have  liked  the  poetry;  you  should  come 
and  see  the  home  that  the  poetry  has  pur- 
chased." 

As  its  name  implies,  Hauteville  House  is 
situated  in  the  upper  part  of  the  town,  on  the 
top  of  a  cliff,  in  a  small,  narrow,  winding 
street, which,  it  must  be  allowed,  is  somewhat 
ugly.  The  front  is  bare,  and  painted  black, 
which  gives  it  a  melancholy  aspect  external- 
ly; but  no  sooner  has  a  visitor  crossed  its 
threshold  than  he  is  conscious  of  a  thrill  of 
emotion.  He  enters  the  asylum  of  a  ban- 
ished poet. 

In  the  outer  hall  stands  an  elegant  column 
of  carved  oak,  its  panels  representing  scenes 
from  "Notre  Dame  de  Paris."  The  stair- 
case ascends  from  an  inner  hall,  at  the  farther 
end  of  which  a  door  opens  into  the  dining- 
room. 

The  walls  of  the  dining-room  are  adorned 
with  four  relievos  in  white  porcelain,  repre- 
senting huge  vases  of  flowers;  besides  which 
there  are  valuable  plaques,  enamels,  and 
china  ornaments.  Around  the  walls  are 
high -backed  oak  chairs,  on  which  are  old 
paintings  in  the  Flemish  style,  warlike  epi- 
sodes, with  titles  furnished  to  them  .by  the 
poet  himself.  The  table  in  the  centre  is 
large  and  square,  also  of  carved  oak;  while 
at  the  extreme  end  of  the  room,  between  two 
windows  overlooking  the  garden,  there  is  a 
huge  arm-chair  attached  to  the  wall  by  a 
chain,  and  called  the  Bella  Defunctorum,  be- 
cause it  was  the  seat  in  which  the  ancestors 
of  the  house  had  presided  at  the  family 
meals. 

On  the  left  is  a  large  earthenware  stove, 
above  which  is  placed  a  statuette  of  the  Vir- 


THE  OAK  GALLERY  IN  HAUTEVILLE  HOUSE. 


14)2 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  1IIS   TIME. 


gin  and  the  Child.  Victor  Hugo  metamor- 
phosed the  image  so  as  to  make  it  a  represen- 
tation of  Liberty,  engraving  an  inscription, 
which  he  placed  upon  the  pedestal,  indicat- 
ing that  he  saw  in  the  holy  Child  a  type  of 
the  growing  people: 

"Small  though  the  people  be,  it  great  shall  prove, 

And  from  thine  nrins,  prolific  mother,  rise  ; 
Onwards,  O  Liberty  1  thy  footsteps  move; 
Display  thy  mighty  infant  to  our  eyes!" 

The  same  sentiment  was  repeated  in  a  Latin 
hexameter  engraved  upon  the  side: 
"Libertas  popiilnm,  populus  dam  sustiuet  orbem." 

The  garden  seen  from  the  windows,  though 
not  large,  is  very  charming,  being  full  of  ex- 
otics from  the  South. 

On  the  ground-floor  the  other  rooms  are  a 
smoking-room  and  two  parlors.  On  the  first 
landing  is  the  room  that  was  occupied  by 
Auguste  Vacquerie.  The  first  floor  contains 
the  sleeping -apartments  of  the  family  and 
the  two  salons — one  known  as  the  red  draw- 
ing-room, the  other  as  the  blue. 

In  the  blue  room  is  a  table  the  history  of 
which  has  often  been  told.  Before  the 
poet's  exile  some  charitable  individuals  who 
were  organizing  a  bazaar  came  and  asked 
him  to  allow  his  inkstand  to  be  put  up  to 
auction.  Not  content  with  so  modest  a  gift, 
Victor  Hugo  wrote  to  Lamartine,  Georges 
Sand,  and  Dumas  the  elder,  inviting  them  to 
join  him  in  his  present,  and  to  make  a  similar 
contribution.  They  all  complied  with  his 
request,  and  he  had  the  four  inkstands  set  in 
the  corners  of  an  elegant  oak  table.  When 
the  day  of  sale  arrived,  he  was  himself  the 
purchaser  of  the  article  of  furniture,  for 
which  he  paid  a  liberal  price,  and  which  is 
now  preserved  among  other  curiosities  at 
Hauteville  House. 

The  second  floor  is  entirely  occupied  by 
the  famous  Oak  Gallery,  constituting  a  mu- 
seum that  is  in  every  way  remarkable.  Alon 
one  side  are  five  large  windows  overlooking 
the  sea;  in  the  middle  is  an  enormous  oak 
candelabrum  with  many  branches,  surmount- 
ed by  a  wooden  statue  carved  by  Victor 
Hugo's  own  hands.  Behind  this  is  an  open 
balustrade  likewise  carved  in  oak,  and  a 
large  couch,  originally  intended  as  a  bed  for 
Garibaldi,  to  whom  the  poet,  at  the  time  of 
the  Montana  affair,  had  sent  an  offer  of  hos- 
pitality. 

The  verses  in  which  the  invitation  was 
conveyed  are  well  known  : 

"  Yes,  come  1  O  brother  of  the  bruised  spirit,  come  ! 
Though  exiles  we,  for  thee  we  gladly  find  a  home. 


Consent  to  come,  and  hospitality  partake 

With  us,  of  whom  no  tyrant's  power  slaves  could 

make. 

For  Italy,  for  France,  together  let  us  see 
The  promise  of  the  glorious  day  of  liberty  ! 
Together  in  the  evening  wait  the  dawning  light 
When  nations  shall  confess  the  majesty  of  right !" 

Circumstances  prevented  the  great  patriot 
from  accepting  this  earnest  invitation,  and 
the  two  national  emancipators  have  never 
met;  but  that  portion  of  the  Oak  Gallery  has 
never  ceased  to  be  known  as  Garibaldi's 
Chamber. 

On  the  third  story  is  the  study,  a  kind  of 
belvedere,  with  its  sides  and  roof  composed 
of  glass.  In  this  study,  which  overlooked 
the  little  town  of  St.  Sampson  and  its  pictu- 
resque promontory,  the  poet  did  his  work, 
his  books  lying  around  him  at  his  feet,  and 
his  sheets  of  manuscript  scattered  about  the 
sofa,  or  on  the  top  of  the  earthenware  stove. 
Without  express  permission  no  one  was  al- 
lowed to  enter  this  retreat. 

Adjoining  the  study  are  several  apart- 
ments containing  books  and  papers,  a  bed- 
room in  which  the  poet  not  unf  requently  re- 
clined, and  the  modest  apartment  reserved  for 
Madame  Chenay,  Victor  Hugo's  half-sister, 
who  since  1870  has  resided  in  the  house  alone. 

Throughout  the  house  the  light  is  very 
subdued,  reminding  one  of  such  residences  as 
Sir  Walter  Scott  is  given  to  describe.  Every- 
thing about  the  place  bears  the  impress  of  its 
occupier,  reflecting  in  a  way  his  work  and 
genius.  Although  he  did  not  build  it,  it  may 
still  be  reckoned  as  his  own  creation  ;  it  is 
adorned  entirely  after  his  own  fancy,  and 
enlivened  by  his  own  reminiscences  and  de- 
signs. He  would  appear  to  have  taken  upon 
himself  the  functions  of  architect,  painter, 
upholsterer,  sculptor,  collector,  and  decora- 
tor, and  so  to  have  converted  the  house  into 
a  witness  of  himself,  that  renders  Guernsey 
henceforth  historical. 

The  mode  of  life  at  Hauteville  House  is 
generally  known.  Every  member  of  the 
household  had  work  to  do.  The  daughter, 
Adfile,  composed  music  :  the  elder  son  wrote 
dramas  and  romances;  his  brother  translated 
Shakespeare,  rendering  alike  the  spirit  and 
the  letter  of  the  original,  and  making,  as  his 
father  said,  deep  researches  into  his  genius; 
Madame  Victor  Hugo  collected  notes  of  her 
husband's  life,  and  commenced  the  book 
which  her  death  prevented  her  from  bring- 
ing to  completion ;  while  Auguste  Vacquerie 
made  a  daily  store  of  literary  studies — 
learned,  descriptive,  or  humorous  —  from 


VICTOR  HUGO'S  STUDY  AT  HAUTEVILLE  HOUSE. 
13 


194 


VICTOR  HUGO  AXD  HIS   TIME. 


which  he  afterwards  compiled  his  popular 
works  "Les  Miettes  de  I'Histoire,"  and 
"  Proflls  et  Grimaces." 

lu  writing  in  1856  to  Ernest  Lefevre,  Vac- 
querie  says: 

"I  have  a  library  that  is  quite  unique. 
Do  you  know  what  I  have  read  this  year  ? 
In  poems  I  have  read,  'Dieu,'  'La  Fin  de 
Sntan,'  and  'Les  Petites  Epopees;'  in  dra- 
ma I  have  got  through  'Homo,'  'Lc  The- 
fitre  en  Liberte,'  and  'Les  Drames  de  1'In- 
visible  ;'  in  lyrics,  '  Les  Contemplations, ' 
and  'Chansons  des  Rues  et  des  Bois;'  and 
in  philosophy  the  'Essai  d'Explication,'.  a 
book  that  twenty-five  years  of  thought  have 
not  yet  completed.  For  my  library  I  have 
Victor  Hugo's  manuscripts,  and  I  rove  at  my 
will  among  clitfo  -  d'auvre  that  no  eye  has 
hitherto  seen.  I  have  '  Ruy  Bias'  all  to 
myself.  It  is  an  indescribable  feeling  to  be 
all  alone  in  these  unpublished  realms  of 
thought,  among  untouched  strophes,  amid 
the  purity  of  such  creations  and  the  virginity 
of  their  dawn.  It  is  like  Adam's  ecstasy 
over  his  first  day  in  Paradise. " 

Victor  Hugo  has  given  his  own  account  of 
these  prolific  years  of  work.  In  speaking 
of  his  sons,  he  says  that  they  simply  did 
their  duty.  They  served  and  glorified  their 
country,  spending  their  lives  in  her  service, 
though  they  were  far  away.  They  honored 
their  mother,  they  mourned  for  the  sister 
they  had  lost,  they  cherished  the  sister  that 
was  left  to  them;  they  assisted  their  father 
to  bear  his  banishment,  and  acted  as  broth- 
ers to  their  companions  in  adversity.  They 
proved  themselves  worthy  of  the  poet, 
knowing  how  to  struggle  and  how  to  en- 
dure. 

Hauteville  House  was  a  general  refuge, 
and  no  application  for  admittance  was  re- 
fused. One  of  the  rooms  by  the  side  of  Vic- 
tor Hugo's  study  was  placed  at  the  disposal 
of  any  Frenchman  of  letters  who  wanted  to 
write  a  book  as  the  occupation  of  his  exile, 
and  Gerard  de  Nerval,  Ourliac,  Balzac,  and 
not  a  few  others,  at  different  times  occupied 
the  apartment,  Victor  Hugo  providing  board 
as  well  as  lodging,  and  felicitously  calling 
the  retreat  ' '  the  raft  of  Medusa. " 

Not  only  was  the  house  full  of  visitors,  it 
abounded  with  pets,  all  happy  and  well  cared 
for.  ' '  It  gratifies  me, "  said  Vacquerie, ' '  that 
this  abode  of  genius  is  the  abode  of  animals ; 
the  creatures  love  those  that  love  them,  and 
always  pick  out  the  best  among  us."  In  his 
' '  Profils  et  Grimaces  "  he  has  devoted  several 


I  pages  to  these  four-footed  inmates,  giving 
the  history  of  Ponto,  the  handsome  spaniel, 
good  -  tempered  and  faithless ;  of  Chougna, 
the  watch-dog,  brutal  in  aspect,  yet  gentle  in 
temper;  of  Lux,  Charles  Hugo's  favorite; 
and  of  Mouche,  the  great  black-and-white 
cat,  equally  defiant  and  morose. 

From  Belgium  Madame  Victor  Hugo  had 
brought  a  magnificent  greyhound,  which 
was  stuffed  after  its  death,  and  still  stands  in 
the  house.  The  inscription  on  its  collar  was 
by  the  poet  himself: 
"Whoever  shall  find  me,  please  to  take  me  whence  I 

came; 
I'm  Madame  Hugo's  dog,  and  Sonat  is  my  name." 

The  name  was  doubtless  given  as  a  souvenir 
of  the  senate  of  the  Second  Empire.  Alto- 
gether, the  house  seemed  to  suggest  Madame 
de  StaeTs  words,  "The  more  I  know  men, 
the  more  I  love  dogs;"  not  that  the  love  of 
dogs  in  the  place  in  the  least  interfered  with 
the  kindness  and  consideration  uniformly 
shown  to  human  beings. 

Such  was  the  home  where  the  author  of 
"La  Legende  des  Siecles"  resided,  and 
where,  according  to  the  rule  that  he  laid 
down  for  himself,  he  worked  almost  literally 
from  morning  to  night. 

Here,  too,  was  finished  "Les  Miserable/3," 
that  marvellous  production  which  goes  far  to 
justify  the  name  that  has  been  bestowed  upon 
it,  of  "the  work  of  the  century."  It  had 
been  commenced  in  the  Place  Royale,  and 
was  to  have  been  published  by  Gosselin  and 
Renduel  about  1848,  one  portion  of  it  being 
then  entitled,  "  Le  Manuscrit  de  I'EvSque. " 
But  political  events  interrupted  the  compo- 
sition, so  that  its  issue  was  deferred  until 
now.  Meanwhile  its  original  design  had 
been  much  enlarged.  Carried  away  by  his 
imagination,  the  author  continued  to  expand 
the  work,  never  wearying  of  introducing 
new  episodes,  inserting  new  incidents,  and 
even  adding  new  chapters. 

In  August,  1861,  a  year  before  the  appear- 
ance of  the  book,  Victor  Hugo  wrote  from 
Schiedam,  in  Holland,  to  Paul  Foucher,  in 
reply  to  a  request  that  he  had  made  to  be  al- 
lowed to  dramatize  the  romance: 

' '  My  son  Charles  has  already  taken  notes 
for  this  purpose,  but  it  is  not  impossible  that 
there  may  be  material  enough  in  '  Les  Mise- 
rables '  to  form  the  subject  of  more  than  one 
drama.  The  work  will  appear  in  three  parts, 
each  having  its  own  title,  and  each,  in  fact, 
being  a  separate  story,  although  the  whole 
book  revolves  around  one  central,  single 


JEAN  VALJEAN  ("  LE8  MI8ERABLES  "). 


196 


VIC  TO  It  HUGO  AX1>   7//>    TIM  I-:. 


figure ;  it  is  a  sort  of  planetary  system,  making 
the  circuit  about  one  giant  mind  llial  is  the 
personification  of  all  existing  social  evil." 

\Vlicn  the  book  really  appeared  in  1862,  it 
came  out  in  rive  parts,  called  respectively 
"  Fantine,"  "  Cosette,"  "  JVIarius,"  "  L'Idylle 
Rue  Plumet  et  1'Epopee  Rue  Saint-Denis," 
and  "Jean  Valjean."  Moreover,  instead  of 
consisting  of  two  octavo  volume-,  as  had 
been  previously  announced,  it  extended  to 
no  less  than  ten.  It  was  published  simul- 
taneously in  Paris.  IJru-sd-.  I.eipsic,  Lon- 
don. Milan.  .Madrid,  Rotterdam,  Warsaw. 
IV-th.  ami  Hio  .laneiro. 

Seven  thousand  copies  were  issued  in  the 
original  Paris  edition,  which  was  published 
by  Pagnerre,  every  one  of  which  was  sold 
within  two  days.  The  printer,  Claye,  had 
fortunately  taken  the  precaution  to  keep  a 
number  in  reserve,  so  that  a  fresh  supply  was 
ready  in  a  fortnight  afterwards,  and  thus  the 
aggregate  of  the  first  Paris  edition  amount- 
ed to  15,000  copies.  The  Brussels  edition 
reached  12,000,  the  Leipsic  being  3000.  Cop- 
ies of  foreign  translations  were  issued  to  the 
number  of  25,950,  without  including  those 
that  were  pirated.  Two  illustrated  editions 
were  likewise  produced,  and  subsequently  a 
splendid  edition  de  luxe  was  published  by 
Hughes;  so  that,  on  the  whole,  the  circulation 
may  be  estimated  at  hundreds  of  thousand*-, 
and  the  book  may  be  reckoned  as  one  of  the 
most  wonderful  successes  of  the  kind  that 
have  ever  been  known. 

The  secret  of  the  success  was  not  hard  to 
find.  The  powerful  voice  of  Victor  Hugo, 
raised  as  it  had  ever  been  in  behalf  of  the 
di -endowed  classes,  was  bound  to  be  heard 
by  all  the  world ;  and  here  were  his  whole  soul 
and  his  ardent  love  for  the  people  all  thrown 
into  a  work  in  a  way  which  made  it  the  cul- 
minating point  of  his  social  evolution. 

Full  of  pity  for  such  as  have  been  crushed 
by  fate,  he  becomes  the  champion  of  the  un- 
fortunate, while  he  is  full  of  sympathy  for 
those  who  rise  from  their  degradation.  He 
extends  his  hand  to  all  who  are  oppressed  in 
any  way  by  social  law,  and  even  pleads  for 
pardon  for  those  whose  crimes  are  the  result 
of  hereditary  vice  or  evil  example. 

All  the  philosophy  of  the  work  is  summed 
up  in  a  few  lines  in  the  preface: 

"As  long  as  the  action  of  laws  and  cus- 
toms is  the  cause  of  the  existence  of  a  social 
damnation  that  artificially  creates  a  hell  in 
the  full  light  of  civilization ;  as  long  as  there 
is  found  no  solution  of  the  three  problems  of 


the  aire— the  degradation  of  men  by  the  pro- 
letarian, the  decay  of  women  by  hunger,  and 
the  atrophy  of  children  by  night  ;  as  long 
as  social  asphyxia  is  possible  in  certain  re- 
gions; or,  in  other  terms,  and  from  a  wider 
point  of  view,  as  long  as  misery  and  igno- 
rance prevail,  so  long  will  it  be  true  that 
books  of  this  kind  have  a  service  to  render." 

Il  is  not  requisite  for  us  here  to  analy/e  a 
work  which  has  been  admired  by  all  who 
have  read  it.  From  Jean  Valjean  toGavroche, 
every  character  that  plays  a  part  in  "Les 
Miserables"  is  universally  known.  Then  i- 
searcely  any  one  who  has  not  been  touched 
by  the  -race  of  the  descriptions,  by  the  clear- 
ness of  the  portraits,  and  by  the  vigor  of  the 
incidents.  The  grandeur  of  its  font  <  nut  mhl< . 
the  artistic  richness  of  its  style,  the  boldness 
of  its  composition,  explain  how  it  is  that  not 
only  in  France,  but  throughout  the  educated 
world,  the  book  has  found  such  a  multitude 
of  readers. 

"Something  exists,"  said  the  poet  to  us 
one  day,  "  I  know  not  what,  in  common 
with  me  and  the  people,  that  makes  us  tin 
derstand  each  other." 

And  so  it  is.  The  heart  of  the  populace 
strikes  home  to  his  heart,  and  for  that  simple 
reason  "  Les  Miserables"  has  found  its  way 
into  every  land.  During  one  of  his  journeys 
in  Eastern  Russia,  M.  Alfred  Rambaud  came 
across  a  Russian  translation  in  a  bookseller's 
shop  at  Kazan,  a  town  that  is  half  Tartar; 
and  General  Lee's  niece  has  related  how, 
during  the  War  of  Secession,  the  American 
soldiers  carried  English  translations  in  their 
knapsacks,  and  used  to  read  them  in  the  in- 
tervals of  battle  by  the  light  of  their  camp- 
fires.  This  was  known  as  the  Volunteer's 
Edition;  and  the  men  would  amuse  them- 
selves by  calling  each  other  Marius,  Myriel, 
Valjean,  or  some  other  name  that  figures  in 
the  book.  An  immense  number  of  copies, 
moreover,  are  scattered  about  the  republics 
of  South  America;  and  even  Japanese  ver- 
sions are  in  existence. 

Immediately  on  its  appearance,  the  critics 
began  to  deal  with  it  in  long  and  thought- 
ful articles.  Barbey  d'Aurevilly,  Voirsuon, 
Courtat,  and  many  more,  published  elaborate 
notices  sufficient  to  fill  a  volume.  But  the 
only  criticism  that  we  will  stop  to  consider 
is  that  given  in  the  pages  devoted  to  "Les 
Miserables"  by  Lamartiue  in  his  "Cours  de 
Litterature."  The  familiar  conversations  on 
the  subject  are  called  "Considerations  sur 
un  Chef-d'oeuvre,  ou  le  Danger  du  Genie." 


GAVROCHE  ("LES  MISERABLES  "). 


198 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  UIS   TIM  I-:. 


The  author  of  "Lcs  Meditations"  begins 
by  owning  that  he  had  been  much  pressed 
to  publish  his  views  on  this  impassioned  and 
radical  criticism  on  society.  But  before  do- 
ing so  he  wrote  to  Victor  Hugo,  telling  him 
that  while  reading  the  book  he  had  been  al- 
ternately charmed  by  its  picturesqueness 
and  shocked  by  its  principles,  declaring  that 
its  radicalism  and  denunciation  of  society 
were  repugnant  to  him,  simply  because  so- 
ciety, though  imperfect  as  being  human,  was 
sacred  as  being  a  necessity.  He  proceeded 
to  say  that  if  he  wrote  upon  "Les  Misera- 
bles"  he  should  respect  the  genius  and  talent 
of  the  author,  but  that  no  admiration  of  his 
skill  could  prevent  him  from  cordially  op- 
posing his  theory ;  and  representing  that 
from  this  opposition  to  the  theory  he  must 
involuntarily  be  brought  into  collision  both 
with  the  author  and  his  work.  Accordingly 
he  would  await  a  reply  before  writing  a  sin- 
gle line  of  the  admiration  and  of  the  censure 
that  were  simultaneously  boiling  within  him. 

Victor  Hugo  replied  two  or  three  times, 
invariably  giving  Lamartine  full  permission 
to  do  precisely  as  he  pleased.  Among  other 
things,  he  said  to  him : 

"If  radicalism  is  the  ideal,  I  am  a  radical. 
From  eveiy  point  of  view  I  want  and  de- 
mand what  is  best.  The  proverb  says  '  Let 
well  alone ;'  but  that  is  very  much  the  same 
as  saying  that  the  best  and  the  evil  arc- 
one.  .  .  . 

' '  Yes,  a  society  that  admits  misery,  a  hu- 
manity that  admits  war,  seem  to  me  an  in- 
ferior society  and  a  debased  humanity.  It 
is  a  higher  society  and  a  more  elevated  hu- 
manity at  which  I  am  aiming  —  a  society 
without  kings,  a  humanity  without  barriers. 

"I  want  to  universalize  property,  not  to 
abolish  it.  I  would  suppress  parasitism.  I 
want  to  see  every  man  a  proprietor,  and  no 
man  a  master.  This  is  my  idea  of  true  social 
economy.  The  goal  may  be  far  distant,  but 
is  that  a  reason  for  not  striving  to  advance 
towards  it? 

"  Yes,  as  much  as  a  man  can  long  for  any- 
thing, I  long  to  destroy  human  fatality.  I 
condemn  slavery,  I  chase  away  misery,  I  in- 
struct ignorance,  I  illumine  darkness,  I  dis- 
card malice.  Hence  it  is  that  I  have,v,-ritten 
'Les  Miserables!' 

"  To  my  own  mind  it  is  a  book  that  has 
fraternity  for  its  pedestal,  and  progress  for 
its  crown. 

' '  Then,  take  the  book  and  weigh  it  well. 
Literary  communications  between  men  of 


letters  are  simply  ridiculous;  but  political 
and  social  debate  between  equals — that  is  to 
say.  philosophers — may  be  as  useful  as  it  is 
weighty. 

"  You  for  your  part,  it  is  plain  enough,  to 
a  great  extent  desire  the  same  tilings  as  I; 
only  perhaps  j'ou  would  take  a  less  precipi- 
tous path.  For  myself,  with  so  much'suHVr 
ing  before  my  gaze,  I  would  strictly  avoid 
all  violence  and  retaliation,  but  otherwise  1 
would  take  the  very  shortest  path  that  is  pos- 
sible." 

Lamartine  still  hesitated,  and  Victor  Hugo 
shortly  afterwards  sent  him  another  charac- 
teristic letter: 

"DEAR  LAMARTIXE, — So  long  ago  as  1820 
my  first  lisping  as  a  youthful  poet  was  a  cry 
of  admiration  for  your  brilliant  sun,  which 
was  just  rising  on  the  world.  What  I  wrote 
still  fills  a  page  in  my  works,  and  I  still  love 
that  page  well;  it  was  written,  with  many 
others,  for  your  glorification. 

' '  The  hour  has  now  come  when  you  have 
to  speak  about  me.  I  am  proud  to  know  it. 
For  forty  years  we  have  loved  each  other, 
and  we  are  not  dead  yet.  You  will,  I  am 
sure,  spoil  neither  the  past  nor  the  future. 
Do  what  you  please  with  my  book.  From 
your  hands  nothing  will  proceed  but  light. 
"Your  old  friend, 

"  VICTOR  HUGO." 

Thereupon  Lamartine  came  to  his  decision, 
and  announced  his  intention  of  demonstrat- 
ing what  he  believed  to  be  social  truth  for  all 
men,  and  even  for  all  intellects.  We  may 
take  it  upon  ourselves  to  say  that  he  was  un- 
equal to  the  task. 

In  au  interminable  dialogue  between  him- 
self and  a  convict  named  Baptistin,  he  tries 
to  prove  that  "Les  Miserables"  is  a  misno- 
mer for  the  book,  which  ought  rather  to  have 
been  called  "Les  Scelerats,"  "Les  Pares- 
seux,"  "L'F^popee  de  la  Canaille,"  or  even 
"L'Homme  contre  la  Societe."  He  com- 
plains that  it  can  only  inspire  a  single  pas- 
sion— the  desire  of  overturning  society  as  it 
!  is,  only  to  re-establish  it  on  a  type  that  is  ad- 
i  vocated  by  an  erratic  man  of  genius;  and  he 
is  thus  led  on  into  a  severe  disquisition  upon 
Plato,  Jean  Jacques  Rousseau,  Saint-Simon, 
Proudhon,  and  finally  upon  Victor  Hugo, 
whom  he  represents  as  suffering  from  verti- 
go, and  laboring  under  a  sickly  sentimental- 
ity, like  a  St.  John  upon  Patmos,  weeping 
tears  of  indignation,  and  fancying  that  he  is 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


199 


writing  for  the  people,  when  all  the  time  he 
is  writing  against  them. 

He  repudiates  the  idea  of  sharing  in  any 
degree  the  envy  or  paltry  jealousy  of  his  pro- 
fession, declaring  that  Victor  Hugo  is  "a 
sovereign  artist,"  who,  though  he  sometimes 
strains  his  pencil,  yet  repeatedly  makes  it 
deliver  thoughts  that  are  immortal;  and,  be- 
sides this,  he  acknowledges  that  Victor  Hugo 
was  right  when  he  said,  "I  have  an  advan- 
tage over  Lamartine  in  understanding  him, 
while  he  could  not  understand  my  dramatic 
genius."  He  owns,  for  instance,  that  he  never 
could  comprehend  either  "Hernani"  or 
"Ruy  Bias."  Nevertheless,  he  claims  to  un- 
derstand society,  and  indulges  in  his  own 
vision  of  what  it  ought  to  be. 

Between  Victor  Hugo  and  Lamartine  there 
was  this  great  difference  —  the  one  had  ad- 
vanced, while  the  other  had  been  going  back. 
Lamartine  reproaches  his  friend  for  not  hav- 
ing kept  faithful  to  his  creed  of  1848,  the 
time  when  he  had  Hugo's  two  sons  working 
under  him  in  his  office  for  Foreign  Affairs ; 
he  laments  that  the  author  of  "Les  Chfiti- 
ments  "  should  have  gone  so  far  as  to  write 
revengeful  poetry,  of  which  nothing  was  to 
be  admired  but  the  power;  he  deplores  the 
production  of  the  diatribes  that  stigmatize  in- 
dividuals, avowing  that  if  <they  were  written 
with  one  hand  they  ought  to  be  erased  with 
the  other;  because  in  politics,  although  there 
may  be  fighting,  there  should  never  be  insult.  \ 

In  the  end,  Lamartine  comes  to  the  conclu- 
sion that ' '  Les  Miserables  "  is  an  unjust  and 
exaggerated  onslaught  upon  society,  leading 
men  on  to  abhor  the  social  order  which  is ; 
their  salvation,  and  to  rave  for  a  social  disor- 
der which  would  prove  their  destruction. 
He  takes  much  precaution  in  softening  all ; 
asperity  of  expression;  but,  in  spite  of  his 
care,  he  passes  a  stern  condemnation  upon  all 
Victor  Hugo's  dramatic  works,  especially  on  j 
those  of  the  period  of  his  exile.  He  confesses, 
what  is  not  in  any  way  to  his  honor,  that  he 
has  arrived  at  a  time  of  life  when  he  feels 
that  he  must  yield  to  the  pressure  of  circum- 
stances, and  regard  society  as  it  exists  to  be 
the  accomplishment  of  centuries.  To  his 
mind  Victor  Hugo  is  a  Utopian,  and  Utopi- 
ans are  more  to  be  dreaded  than  knaves,  be- 
cause no  one  distrusts  them,  and  every  one  is 
pleased  with  their  flatteries;  and  hence  he 
pronounces  "Les  Miserables"  to  be  a  dan- 
gerous book,  inasmuch  as  it  makes  those  who 
are  happy  fear  too  much,  and  those  who  are 
unhappy  hope  too  much. 


No  doubt  it  is  painful  to  read  all  this  criti- 
cism; it  exhibits  only  too  plainly  the  enfee- 
!  blement  of  a  great  intellect.  Lamartine  was 
entering  upon  the  old-age  which  was  not  to 
augment  his  glory,  and  apparently  he  had 
ceased  to  believe  in  human  progress.  Victor 
Hugo  was  full  of  tenderness  for  those  who 
mourn  and  for  those  who  suffer.  He  could 
not  see  why  humanity  should  be  condemned 
to  perpetual  woe;  his  wish  was  not  only  to 
ameliorate  its  lot,  but  to  second  the  efforts  of 
all  who  cherished  the  same  aim. 

It  did  not  content  Victor  Hugo  while  he 
was  in  Guernsey  to  plead  the  cause  of  the 
miserable  in  his  books;  from  the  year  1861 
he  labored  to  put  his  theory  into  practice  by 
entertaining  a  number  of  poor  children,  who 
were  brought  every  week  to  his  house  by 
their  mothers.  At  first  eight,  then  fifteen, 
then  twenty,  and  afterwards  forty  came  to 
sit  at  his  table,  where  they  were  waited  on  by 
himself  and  his  household,  and  regaled  with 
slices  of  roast  beef  and  glasses  of  wine,  and 
told  "to  laugh  and  be  merry."  It  seemed  to 
Victor  Hugo  that  his  idea  was  worthy  of  im- 
itation ;  considering  it  not ' '  almsgiving, "  but 
"fraternity,"  and  holding  that  this  blending 
of  poor  families  with  his  own  was  as  advan- 
tageous to  him  as  it  was  to  them;  it  was  all 
in  accordance  with  the  spirit  of  pure  democ- 
racy, and  the  result  should  be  that,  while  we 
learn  to  serve  them,  they  should  be  brought 
to  love  us.  At  Christmas  -  time  especially 
there  were  great  festivities,  and  a  general  dis- 
tribution of  toys,  cakes,  and  clothing. 

The  poet  did  not  lose  the  gratification  of 
seeing  that  this  charming  institution  stirred 
up  many  others  to  imitate  his  example;  as 
the  issue  of  the  initiative  that  he  had  taken, 
thousands  of  dinners  were  given  away  to  the 
needy  throughout  England  and  America. 
Hauteville  House  was  the  original  starting- 
point  of  the  movement  which  has  produced 
such  capacious  charitable  halls  in  London. 

In  opening  one  of  his  Christmas  feasts,  Vic- 
tor Hugo  made  a  speech,  and  said: 

"An  act  of  emancipation  it  is  to  succor 
children.  In  health  and  education  there  is  a 
real  liberation ;  by  fortifying  a  poor  suffering 
body,  and  by  developing  an  uncultured  in- 
tellect, we  accomplish  a  great  thing ;  we  re- 
move disease  from  the  body;  we  take  away 
ignorance  from  the  mind.  My  idea  of  pro- 
viding a  substantial  dinner  for  the  destitute 
has  been  well  received  almost  everywhere; 
as  an  institution  of  fraternity  it  is  accepted 
with  a  cordial  welcome — accepted  by  Chris- 


soo 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


tians  as  being  in  conformity  with  the  Gos- 
pel, mid  by  democrat!  as  being  agreeable  In 
tin-  principles  of  the  Revolution.  Let  us 
bring  the  brotherhood  of  the  present  to  bear 
upon  the  future:  let  us  lay  out  what  we  can; 
it  will  all  be  restored  to  our  children.  The 
child  is  the  field  of  the  coming  generation; 
what  grows  in  it  will  be  the  harvest  of  the 
next  age;  he  is  the  germ  of  the  society  that 
is  to  be.  Let  us  cultivate  his  mind;  let  us 
instil  the  principles  of  justice  and  of  joy. 
l!v  elevating  the  child  we  elevate  the  people 
of  the  future." 

The  English  press  did  not  fail  to  acknowl- 
edge what  their  country  owed  to  the  benevo- 
lence that  prompted  the  ideas  of  the  French 
political  exiles.  The  Times  published  a 
statement  declaring  that  the  health  of  the 
children  in  the  Westminster  Ragged  Schools 
had  appreciably  improved  from  the  time 
they  were  provided  with  a  substantial  meal 
given  them  once  a  week.  To  our  mind  the 
association  is  clear,  and  so  it  has  been  by 
design  that  we  have  introduced  this  notice 
of  dinners  to  the  poor  in  direct  connection 
with  our  review  of  "Les  Miserables,"  the 
one  work  appearing  to  be  the  complement 
of  the  other. 

When  the  book  was  given  to  the  world, 
the  publishers  in  Brussels — Lacroix  and  Ver- 
boeckhoven  —  sent  the  author  an  invitation 
to  a  banquet,  which  he  did  not  hesitate  long 
in  accepting.  The  announcement  was  known 
throughout  Europe,  and  excited  some  atten- 
tion among  the  imperial  police  in  Paris. 
From  all  quarters — from  France,  England, 
Italy,  and  Spain — Victor  Hugo's  friends  and 
admirers  came  flocking  to  meet  him.  Mr. 
Lowe  represented  the  English  press,  and  M. 
Ferrari  the  Italian  ;  while  associated  with 
them  were  Louis  Blanc,  Eugene  Pelletan, 
Nefftzer,  De  Banville,  Champfleury,  and  a 
long  catalogue  of  others.  The  banquet  was 
held  in  M.  Lacroix's  house,  and  was  attended 
by  eighty  distinguished  guests.  All  the  Bel- 
gian newspapers  were  represented,  and  the 
principal  magistrates  were  also  present.  Vic- 
tor Hugo  presided,  having  the  Burgomaster  of 
Brussels  on  his  right  hand,  and  the  President 
of  the  Chamber  of  Representatives  on  his  left. 

The  entertainment  passed  off  without  any 
contretemps,  and  must  be  admitted  to  have 
been  an  important  event,  literary  as  well  as 
political,  as  being  a  reunion  of  the  talent  and 
intellect  of  the  civilized  world  at  once  pro- 
testing against  the  Empire  and  manifesting 
its  sympathy  with  the  exile. 


Many  speecheswere delivered.  In  the  name, 
of  the  international  book-trade.  MM.  Lacroix 
and  Verboeckhoven  tendered  their  thanks  to 
the  author  of  "Les  Mi.-erable«.;"  .M.  Nefftzer 
spoke  for  Li  '/;////;.«,  M.  Bcrardi  for  L'ln<i<'- 
jKndanci  lii-ff/f,  and  M.  IVlletan  for  L>  »'<V/( . 
Louis  Blanc  pronounced  a  few  touching 
words;  then  Champlleury  addressed  the  dis- 
tinguished guest  in  the  name  of  the  prose- 
writers;  and  finally  Theodore  dc  Bauville  on 
behalf  of  the  poets. 

Tears  fell  from  the  eyes  of  the  exile  as 
he  listened  to  these  speeches,  rivalling  each 
other  in  their  tone  of  admiration  and  all'ec 
tion.  In  returning  thanks,  he  said: 

' '  Eleven  years  ago,  my  friends,  you  saw 
me  departing  from  among  you  comparatively 
young.  You  see  me  now  grown  old.  But, 
though  my  hair  has  changed,  my  heart  re- 
mains the  same.  1  thank  you  for  coming 
here  to-day,  and  beg  you  to  accept  my  best 
and  warmest  acknowledgments.  In  the  midst 
of  you  I  seem  once  more  to  be  breathing  my 
native  air;  every  Frenchman  seems  to  bring 
me  a  fragment  of  France;  and  while  thus  I 
find  myself  in  contact  with  your  spirits,  a 
beautiful  glamour  appears  to  encircle  my 
soul,  and  to  charm  me  like  the  smile  of  my 
mother-country. " 

Prolonged  applause  greeted  his  speech, 
and,  after  a  few  words  from  the  burgomas- 
ter, to  which  Victor  Hugo  again  replied,  the 
memorable  gathering  broke  up. 

Meanwhile  the  critics  were  going  on  with 
their  work,  and  M.  Grenier,  a  man  of  consid- 
erable literary  power,  and  the  editor  of  the 
(Jonxtitutionnel,  took  up  the  argument  of  La- 
martine,  and  wrote : 

"According  to  M.  Hugo,  society  as  it  ex- 
ists is  the  origin  and  author  of  all  the  crimes 
that  appal  us  and  all  the  miseries  that  afflict 
us  ;  it  is  a  league  of  the  strong,  bound  to- 
gether in  a  merciless  compact  by  their  own 
selfish  interests  against  the  weak,  who  are  im- 
posed upon  in  their  helplessness;  it  is  a  uni- 
versal system  of  untruth,  iniquity,  and  op- 
pression, which  covers  the  most  crying  abuses 
and  the  worst  disorder  with  the  specious 
varnish  which  it  designates  law  and  justice. 
Crime  has  no  refuge  but  crime;  shame  has 
nothing  to  expect  but  shame ;  misery  has  no 
flight  beyond  misery.  .  .  .  Such  is  the  basis 
of  the  teaching  of  'Les  Miserables.'  The 
doctrine  is  a  misappreciation  of  human  nat- 
ure; it  confines  itself  to  the  study  of  certain 
deplorable  facts  that  every  one  regrets,  and 
that  it  is  no  one's  business  to  alter." 


THE  DINNER  TO   POOR   CHILDREN. 


202 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS  TIME. 


But  need  we  reply  that  to  alter  them  is 
precisely  what  ought  to  be  done?  All  honor 
is  due  to  those  who,  holding  that  society  is 
responsible  for  the  ills  of  humanity.lay  them- 
selves out  to  rectify  its  laws.  It  may  be  true 
that  any  progress  that  can  be  made  must  be 
slow,  but  there  is  no  room  to  deny  that  such 
progress  may  exist. 

While,  however,  M.  Grenier  took  this  dis- 
paraging view  of  the  philosophy  which  char- 
acterized "Les  Miserables,"  he  gave  his  tes- 


timony to  the  literary  charms  of  the  book. 
He  confessed  that  it  sparkled  with  many 
hcautic-s;  he  gave  an  unqualified  admiration 
to  the  purity  of  its  eloquence,  declaring  that 
the  delineation  of  Fantine  was  most  touch- 
ing, and  the  description  of  Waterloo  the  work 
of  a  true  poet. 

Before  long  complete  justice  was  done  to 
the  book,  which  earned  for  itself  in  some 
quarters  the  title  of  "The  Gospel  of  the 
People." 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME., 


203 


CHAPTER  XXVIL 

"Victor  Hugo  and  Capital  Punishment.—"  Le  Dernier  Jour  d'un  Condamne."— "Claude  Gueux."— The  Verses 
that  Saved  Barbes'  Life.— Louis  Philippe's  Recognition.— Speech  in  the  Constituent  Assembly.— Trial  of 
Charles  Hugo.— Defence  by  his  Father.— Protests  from  Jersey.— A  Letter  to  Lord  Palmerston.— John 
Brown  and  America.— Debate  of  the  Genevan  Republic.—"  Pour  nu  Soldat." 


OF  all  the  causes  of  which  Victor  Hugo 
was  the  champion,  that  of  the  abolition  of 
capital  punishment  is  without  dispute  the 
one  to  which  he  devoted  himself  with  the 
.greatest  energy. 

As  far  back  as  1829  he  had  published  "  Le 
Dernier  Jour  d'un  Condamne,"  which,  being 
anonymous,  was  supposed  by  not  a  few  of 
the  reviewers  to  be  the  work  either  of  an 
Englishman  or  an  American.  Written  in 
consequence  of  an  execution  that  had  taken 
place  on  the  Greve,  it  contains  a  description 
of  all  the  physical  suffering,  and  an  analysis 
•of  all  the  mental  torture,  that  a  condemned 
man  is  likely  to  undergo  in  the  course  of  the 
few  hours  preceding  his  execution.  This 
thrilling  appeal  was  eagerly  read  at  the  time, 
and  in  1832  a  preface  was  added  which  con- 
tained the  following  passage : 

"It  is  the  author's  aim  and  design  that 
posterity  should  recognize  in  his  work  not  a 
mere  special  pleading  for  any  one  particular 
criminal,  which  is  always  easy  and  always 
transitory,  but  a  general  and  permanent  ap- 
peal in  behalf  of  all  the  accused,  alike  of  the 
present  and  of  the  future.  Its  great  point  is 
the  right  of  humanity  urged  upon  society. 
It  comes  face  to  face  with  the  question  of 
life  and  death  denuded  of  all  the  equivoca- 
tions of  the  bar,  brought  boldly  out  into  the 
light  of  day,  and  placed  where  it  must  per- 
force be  seen  in  its  true  and  terrible  colors — 
not  at  the  tribunal,  but  at  the  scaffold;  not  in 
the  presence  of  the  judge,  but  under  the 
hands  of  the  executioner." 

Nothing  could  be  more  eloquent  than  the 
plea  in  favor  of  the  total  abrogation  of  the 
penalty ;  and  never  has  Victor  Hugo  been 
brought  within  view  of  a  scaffold  without 
raising  his  voice  in  defence  of  the  inviola- 
bility of  human  life. 

In  1834  he  wrote  "Claude  Gueux,"  the 
history  of  one  of  those  peculiar  though  not 
infrequent  cases  of  murder  under  extenuat- 
ing circumstances,  where  the  victim  is  less 


interesting  than  the  murderer.  It  came  out 
originally  in  the  Revue  de  Paris,  of  which  M, 
Buloz  had  the  management  at  the  time.  Two 
years  previously  the  poet  had  interceded  in 
vain  for  the  unhappy  hero  who,  after  all, 
was  executed.  The  story  is  terrible,  and 
concludes  with  a  soul-stirring  reproof  to  the 
members  of  the  Chamber,  bidding  them  to 
take  to  pieces  the  old  lame  scale  of  penalties, 
and  to  remodel  it  afresh. 

"There  are,"  he  said,  "too  many  heads 
cut  off  every  year  in  France.  You  profess 
to  be  anxious  to  economize ;  be  economical  in 
this.  Pay  schoolmasters  instead  of  execu- 
tioners. Many  a  man  has  become  a  high- 
wayman who,  under  proper  guidance  and 
better  teaching,  would  have  proved  an  excel- 
lent citizen.  Consider  this  head  before  you 
proceed  to  decapitation ;  cultivate  it,  weed 
it,  dress  it,  fertilize  it,  illumine  it,  utilize  it; 
you  can  do  far  better  with  it  than  cut  it  off. " 

He  deemed  the  penalty  so  unworthy  of  a 
civilized  nation  that  he  never  lost  an  oppor- 
tunity of  delivering  his  protest  against  it. 
On  the  13th  of  May,  1839,  while  he  was  at 
the  theatre  witnessing  the  performance  of 
"La  Esmeralda,"  the  report  reached  him 
that  Barbes  had  been  sentenced,  and  was 
condemned  to  be  executed  for  the  part  he 
had  taken  in  an  insurrection.  He  hurried 
off  to  the  greenroom,  seized  a  sheet  of  paper, 
and  in  allusion  to  the  recent  death  of  the  lit- 
tle Princess  Mary  and  the  recent  birth  of  the 
Comte  de  Paris,  he  wrote  a  few  lines,  and 
sent  them  immediately  to  Louis  Philippe : 

"  Oh,  by  thy  child  that  is  gone,  fled  away  like  a  dove ! 
Oh,  by  the  prince  that  is  born  and  claims  your  sweet 

love! 

The  tomb  and  the  cradle  their  messages  send  ; 
Be  gracious  !  show  mercy !  and  pardon  extend." 

The  king,  who  had  resisted  the  entreaties 
of  the  duke  and  duchess,  yielded  to  the  pe- 
tition of  the  poet.  He  wrote  to  him,  ' '  I,  for 
my  part,  accede  to  your  request;  it  only  re- 
mains to  obtain  the  assent  of  the  ministry." 


204 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  UIS  TIME. 


That  assent  was  secured,  and  Barb£s'  life  was 
spared. 

This  incident  has  been  recorded  by  Victor 
Hugo  in  the  seventh  volume  of  "  !.<•-  Mi-i '-ru- 
bles." Barbes  sent  him  a  letter  of  thankful 
acknowledgment : 

"  In  my  hour  of  danger  I  am  proud  to  find 
myself  protected  by  a  kindly  ray  of  your 
light.  I  could  not  die  while  you  were  my 
defender.  I  have  not  had  the  chance  of 
showing  myself  worthy  of  being  shielded  by 
you,  but  each  one  has  his  own  fate,  and  they 
were  not  all  heroes  whom  Achilles  saved. 

"And  now  that  I  am  writing,  let  me  give 
you,  in  the  name  of  France  and  of  our  holy 
cause,  a  thousand  thanks  for  the  great  book 
that  you  have  written.  I  believe  that  no  other 
land  save  the  land  of  Joan  of  Arc  and  of  the 
Revolution  was  capable  of  producing  your 
spirit  and  your  genius.  Happy  son  !  happy 
in  having  placed  upon  your  mother's  brow 
a  new  garland  of  glory. 

"  Yours,  with  deep  affection, 

"A.  BARB£S. 
"  La  Haye,  July  10, 1862." 

In  reply,  Victor  Hugo  sent  him  a  charming 
letter,  which  has  been  included  in  the  biog- 
raphy written  by  Madame  Hugo. 

The  unremitted  attacks  which  he  made 
upon  the  scaffold  did  much  to  procure  him 
the  esteem  of  Louis  Philippe,  who  was  him- 
self most  strongly  opposed  to  capital  punish- 
ment. One  day,  when  the  poet  had  been  sum- 
moned to  the  Tuileries,  the  king  said  to  him : 

"M.  Hugo,  I  shall  create  you  a  peer  of 
France.  The  title,  which  is  the  highest  that 
our  political  order  can  confer,  is  ostensibly 
given  you  in  recognition  of  your  literary  tal- 
ent; but  I  wish  you  to  understand  that  it  is 
my  especial  desire  that  you  should  be  re- 
warded for  your  noble  efforts  towards  the 
abolition  of  the  punishment  of  death." 

In  1848,  as  a  representative  in  the  Assem- 
bly, he  continued  his  agitation.  Ascending 
the  tribune,  he  exclaimed: 

"  Capital  punishment  is  the  peculiar  and 
undeviating  sign  of  barbarism.  Where  capi- 
tal punishment  is  frequent,  barbarism  pre- 
vails; where  it  is  rare,  civilization  predomi- 
nates. At  the  head  of  the  preamble  of  your 
constitution  you  write, '  In  the  sight  of  God,' 
and  yet  you  proceed  at  once  to  rob  God  of 
what  is  essentially  his  own  prerogative,  the 
power  of  life  and  death.  I  mount  this  trib- 
une to  say  one  thing,  which  I  believe  to  be 


unanswerable.  I  say  that  after  the  2d  of 
February  the  people  had  conceived  a  grand 
idea.  They  had  burned  the  throne;  they 
longed  to  burn  the  scaffold.  1  grieve  that 
tlmse  who  acted  then  on  the  people's  behalf 
did  not  ri<e  to  the  greatness  of  the  people's 
heart.  In  the  tir>t  article  of  the  constitution 
for  which  you  are  voting,  you  have  carried 
out  the  people's  foremost  thought — you  have 
overturned  the  throne.  Now  go  on  and  do 
more  —  carry  out  their  second  thought,  and 
overturn  the  scaffold!" 

But  the  motion  was  lost. 

Again,  in  1849,  Victor  Hugo  made  a  vigor- 
ous attempt  to  procure  pardon  for  the  men 
who  had  been  condemned  to  death  in  the 
Brea  affair ;  but  the  attempt  was  fruit- 
less. 

In  1851  Charles  Hugo  was  brought  to  trial 
because  he  had  written  an  article  in  L 'tene- 
ment against  the  execution  of  Montcharmont, 
which  had  just  taken  place  under  horrible 
circumstances.  The  poet  asked  and  obtained 
permission  to  defend  his  son. 

Charles  Hugo's  writing  that  had  given  of- 
fence was  to  this  effect : 

"Four  days  ago  in  the  public  square  of  a 
French  town,  the  law — that  is  to  say,  the  di- 
vine and  wholesome  power  of  society — took 
a  wretched  creature  by  the  neck,  by  the  arms 
and  legs,  and  having  torn  the  hair  from  his 
head,  and  the  skin  from  his  body,  dragged 
him  howling  and  struggling  to  the  scaffold. 
There,  in  the  presence  of  a  terrified  and  awe- 
struck crowd,  the  law  continued  for  a  whole 
hour  to  wrestle  with  crime." 

Large  and  eager  was  the  audience  that  as- 
sembled to  hear  the  poet's  defence  of  the  ac- 
cused. 

"Gentlemen  of  the  jury,"  he  said,  "you 
will  understand  me  when  I  say  that  if  there  is 
any  guilty  party  in  this  case,  that  guilty  party 
is  not  my  son,  but  myself.  Myself,  I  say, 
because  for  the  last  twenty-five  years  I  have 
been  the  open  opponent  of  irrevocable  pen- 
alties in  every  form,  and  because  I  have  pub- 
licly taken  every  opportunity'  of  asserting  the 
inviolability  of  human  life. 

"  This  crime  of  defending  the  inviolability 
of  life,  if  it  be  a  crime,  has  been  mine  over 
and  over  again.  Long  before  it  was  com- 
mitted by  my  son,  it  was  committed  by  my- 
self with  design,  with  premeditation,  with 
persistency. 

' '  Yes,  I  declare  that  all  my  life  I  have 
strenuously  and  consistently  opposed  this 
remnant  of  savage  codes,  this  ancient  and 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


205 


intelligent  rule  of  retaliation,  this  vindictive 
law  of  blood  for  blood.  And  what  I  have 
done  in  the  past  I  will  do  while  I  have  breath 
in  my  body  for  the  future.  What  I  have 
done  as  a  writer  I  shall  continue  to  do  as  a 
legislator ;  and  this  I  avow  as  it  were  before 
Christ,  the  greatest  of  all  victims  of  capital 


from  his  soul — a  cry  of  horror,  nay,  a  cry  of 
common  humanity — you  would  punish  him 
for  that  cry!  In  the  face  of  all  the  terrible 
events  that  have  transpired,  you  would  say 
to  the  guillotine, '  You  are  right,'  and  to  pity, 
blessed,  sacred  pity,  you  would  say,  '  You 
are  wrong. ' 


CHARLES  HUGO. 


punishment;  this  I  declare  in  the  very  pres- 
ence of  that  cross  to  which,  eighteen  centuries 
ago,  for  the  eternal  instruction  of  the  world, 
human  law  nailed  the  law  that  was  divine. 

"And  now,  when  a  single  cry  escapes  a 
young  man's  lips,  a  cry  of  anguish  coming 


"  And  you,  my  son,  are  honored  in  being 
deemed  worthy  to  fight,  if  not  to  suffer,  in 
the  holy  cause  of  truth.  From  this  day  for- 
ward you  enter  upon  the  manly  life  of  our 
time ;  you  take  your  place  in  the  struggle  for 
the  true  and  the  just.  As  yet  you  are  but  a 


206 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  UIS  TIME. 


soldier  in  the  rank  and  file  of  democratic 
sentiment;  but  you  may  well  be  proud  to 
stand,  though  it  be  in  the  dock,  where  Beran- 
ger  and  Lumcnnais  have  stood  before  you. 
Stand  firm,  then,  my  son,  in  your  convictions; 
stand  firm  in  your  belief  in  progress;  stand 
firm  in  your  faith  in  the  future,  in  your  ab- 
horrence of  irrevocable  penalties,  in  your 
execration  of  the  scaffold!  And  if  you  re- 
quire a  thought  to  strengthen  you,  remember 
that  you  are  only  arraigned  at  the  bar  at 
which  Lesurques  has  been  arraigned  be- 
fore!" 

The  sensation  caused  by  the  speech  was 
very  great,  and  many  hands  were  out- 
stretched towards  the  orator.  The  attorney- 
general  replied,  and  M.  Cremieux  spoke  elo- 
quently in  behalf  of  the  editor  of  L'Ecene- 
ment.  The  jury  gave  their  verdict. 

The  character  of  that  verdict  and  the  view 
that  was  taken  of  it  may  be  understood  by 
a  few  extracts  from  the  newspapers  of  the 
time. 

On  the  same  evening  the  following  ap- 
peared in  La  Presse  : 

"  CONDEMNATION  OP  CHARLES  HUGO. 

" '  Only  on  rare  occasions  is  the  scaffold  now  erect- 
ed in  our  public  squares,  and  then  only  as  a  spectacle 
of  which  justice  is  ashamed.'— LEON  FAUOIIBB,  1836. 

"  This  day,  the  llth  of  June,  1851,  Charles 
Hugo,  who  was  defended  by  his  father,  Victor 
Hugo,  has  been  sentenced  to  six  months'  im- 
prisonment, because,  under  the  Republic,  he 
has  written  precisely  what  the  above  extract 
shows  that  Leon  Faucher  wrote  under  the 
Monarchy. 

"' M.  L.  N.  BONAPARTE,  President 

of  tlie  Republic. 

"  'M.  ROUHER,  Minister  of  Justice. 
"  'M.  LEON  FAUCHER,  Minister  of 

the  Interior.' 

"A  tomb  wants  nothing  but  a  date. 

"Liberty  in  France  exists  no  more. 

"  If  I  were  to  say  all  I  felt  during  the  trial 
from  which  I  have  just  returned,  I  should  be 
sent  to  join  Nefftzer  of  La  Presse  and  Charles 
Hugo  of  L' tenement  inside  a  prison. 

' '  However,  I  hold  my  tongue.    I  may  have 
another  part  to  play  than  the  part  of  defend- 
ant.    The  time  may  come  when  I  shall  have 
to  act  as  judge.     I  am  silent  now. 
"EMILE  DE  GIRARDIN, 

' '  Representative  of  the  People. " 


The  article  in  the  National  was  much  in 
the  same  strain : 

"Our  surmises  were  incorrect.  The  Court 
of  Assizes  has  just  sentenced  M.  Charles  Hugo 
to  six  months'  imprisonment  and  a  fine  of 
500  francs.  We  must  respect  the  judgment, 
though  it  surprises  us  and  grieves  us.  We 
are  sure  that  it  will  be  received  with  sorrow 
by  the  whole  of  the  press. 

"M.  Charles  Hugo  is  the  youngest  of  the 
editors  of  Ijficenetnent;  he  fights  under  the 
banner  of  the  Republic  with  the  generous 
and  passionate  ardor  that  enthusiastic  con- 
victions ever  impart;  and  although  in  his 
criticism  of  a  penalty  prescribed  by  our  law 
he  has  employed  language  so  strong  that 
it  has  entailed  condemnation,  yet  no  one  can 
doubt  the  loyalty  of  his  intentions,  or  ques- 
tion the  end  that  he  desired  to  attain. 

"M.  Victor  Hugo  pleaded  his  son's  cause 
with  wonderful  eloquence,  and  his  defence 
will  rank  among  his  finest  efforts,  both  for 
the  loftiness  of  its  sentiments  and  the  brill- 
iancy of  its  style.  That  eloquence,  however, 
was  foiled  by  the  verdict  of  the  jury ;  and  al- 
though it  is  our  rule  never  to  protest  against 
the  decision  of  justice,  we  may  be  permitted 
to  offer  to  L '^tenement  an  expression  of  sym- 
pathy, assured  that  our  sentiments  are  only 
in  accordance  with  those  of  all  republicans 
towards  a  journal  that  serves  the  cause  of 
democracy  with  so  much  talent  and  courage. 
"THEOD.  PELLOQUET." 

To  these  might  be  added  the  notices  in  Le 
Siecle,  Le  Charivari,  La  Gazette  de  France, 
La  Republique,  and  Le  Messager  de  VAssem- 
blee,  which  were  all  very  much  in  the  same 
strain. 

It  might  well  be  supposed  that  the  repub- 
licans who  thus  protested  against  the  guillo- 
tine at  the  risk  of  their  liberty  would  no 
longer  be  called  drinkers  of  blood ;  neverthe- 
less, the  accusation  continued  to  be  laid  to 
their  charge.  The  populace,  however,  greet- 
ed Victor  Hugo  with  loud  applause  as  he 
left  the  court,  and  cheered  him  all  the  way 
to  his  carriage. 

Nor  did  the  poet,  throughout  his  years  of 
exile,  ever  discontinue  his  pleading  for  the 
condemned;  and  it  has  been  remarked  that  it 
was  touching  to  see  how  the  opponents  of 
the  guillotine  turned  to  the  rocks  of  Jersey 
and  Guernsey  to  seek  co-operation  from  the 
hand  that  had  already  shaken  the  scaffold 
and  will  ultimately  overturn  it. 

Before  Victor  Hugo  left  Jersey,  sentence 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS  TIME. 


207 


of  death  had,  in  1854,  been  pronounced  in 
Guernsey  upon  a  criminal  named  Tapner. 
He  had  murdered  a  woman,  and  Victor  Hugo 
sent  a  memorandum  to  the  Guernsey  people, 
stating  that  the  magistrates  must  be  allowed 
the  credit  of  doing  their  duty  according  to 
the  text  of  the  code  that  they  were  bound  to 
follow,  and  that  they  had  simply  discharged 
their  obligations ;  at  the  same  time,  they  were 
called  upon  to  beware — they  were  practising 
retaliation.  "Thou  hast  shed  blood,  and 
thine  own  blood  shall  be  shed,"  in  the  esti- 
mate of  human  law  was  a  righteous  demand, 
but  in  the  view  of  the  divine  law  was  alto- 
gether odious  and  intolerable.  He  begged 
the  people  to  restrain  themselves  orderly 
within  all  legal  bounds,  but  to  keep  up  a 
peaceful  agitation  on  the  matter  upon  the 
popular  mind  and  conscience. 

Three  years  before  this,  in  1851,  a  Jersey 
man,  named  Fouquet,  had  shot  another  man. 
Independent  juries  had  condemned  the  mur- 
derer to  death  ;  but  while  the  execution  was 
pending  a  great  meeting  had  been  held,  at 
which  the  Frenchman  spoke  with  great  ef- 
fect; a  petition  was  signed,  and  the  queen 
commuted  the  sentence  to  transportation  for 
life.  Fouquet  subsequently  manifested  so 
sincere  a  repentance  that  the  governor  of  the 
jail  in  which  he  was  confined  urged  a  further 
remission  of  sentence.  Mindful  of  this  in- 
stance, Victor  Hugo  was  now  desirous  that  a 
similar  course  should  be  adopted  in  the  case 
of  Tapner.  He  did  not  deny  that  the  man's 
crime  demanded  a  long  and  solemn  humil- 
iation, and  that  his  chastisement  should  be 
severe;  but  he  asked  what  good  they  ex- 
pected by  driving  a  post  into  the  ground, 
passing  a  rope  round  a  man's  neck,  and 
wringing  his  life  out  of  him,  and  whether 
they  supposed  that  such  a  proceeding  would 
set  everything  to  rights. 

The  address  created  no  little  sensation. 
Meetings  were  held,  a  petition  was  forwarded 
to  the  queen.  Three  several  respites  were 
granted,  and  it  began  to  be  believed  that  the 
execution  would  not  take  place,  when  sud- 
denly it  transpired  that  M.  Walewski,  the 
French  ambassador,  had  had  an  interview 
with  Lord  Palmerston,  and  two  days  after- 
wards an  order  arrived  for  Tapner  to  be 
hanged. 

Victor  Hugo  shortly  afterwards  wrote  to 
Lord  Palmerston,  reminding  him  that  three 
pardons  had  been  granted  hi  Jersey  during 
the  space  of  eight  years,  and  asking  why 
something  of  the  same  grace  should  not  be 


displayed  towards  the  people  of  Guernsey. 
The  circumstances  of  Tapner's  execution 
were  exceedingly  revolting,  the  operation 
having  lasted  more  than  twelve  minutes  ; 
and  after  describing  the  horrible  details  the 
poet  continued  his  remonstrance  to  the  Eng- 
lish Home  Secretary  in  a  strain  the  style  of 
which  the  following  extracts  may  serve  as 
specimens : 

"Both  you  and  I  occupy  a  sphere  that  is 
infinitely  small.  I  am  only  an  outlaw;  you 
are  merely  a  minister.  I  am  ashes ;  you  are 
dust.  What  do  you  care  about  capital  pun- 
ishment? For  you  to  take  a  man's  life  is  as 
easy  as  to  drink  a  glass  of  water.  But  keep 
your  nonchalance  for  the  earth;  do  not  offer 
it  to  eternity!  Do  not  trifle  over  these  un- 
seen mysteries.  I  am  nearer  to  them  than 
you  are !  Exul  sicut  mortuus;  and  so  I  speak 
to  you  from  the  sepulchre.  .  .  . 

"What  do  you  care?  A  man  is  hanged, 
and  there  is  a  rope  to  be  rolled  up,  a  gallows 
to  take  down,  and  a  corpse  to  bury.  And  so 
something  has  been  accomplished!  But  take 
care:  that  rope,  that  gallows,  that  corpse,  all 
belong  to  eternity.  By  the  ordinance  of  so- 
ciety the  murderer  becomes  the  murdered; 
this  is  a  terrible  thought.  From  the  beam  of 
the  gallows  the  thing  that  departs  is  an  im- 
mortal soul;  is  not  this  an  awful  consid- 
eration? .  .  . 

"Yes;  it  is  all  keeping  up  the  way  of  the 
past.  Tunis  keeps  up  the  stake;  the  Czar 
maintains  the  knout;  the  Pope  perpetuates 
the  garrote;  Asia  and  America  have  their 
slave -markets;  France  holds  to  the  guillo- 
tine; and  England  still  erects  the  gallows. 
But,  believe  me,  all  these  are  doomed  to  dis- 
appear. .  .  . 

"And  we  have  a  message  to  deliver.  You 
call  yourselves  the  ministers  of  justice  and 
the  preservers  of  right;  you  call  us  anar- 
chists, demagogues,  and  drinkers  of  blood. 
But  I  say  we  have  something  to  tell  you. 
We  declare  that  human  liberty  is  supreme, 
human  intellect  is  holy,  human  life  is  sacred; 
nay,  the  human  soul  is  divine! 

"And  now  go  on  with  your  hanging!" 

Nor  did  Victor  Hugo's  exertions  end  here. 
In  1859  an  execution,  if  not  more  terrible, 
certainly  more  unjustifiable,  than  most,  took 
place  in  America,  that  of  John  Brown,  a  man 
of  property,  and  one  of  the  purest  characters 
in  the  New  World. 

The  sufferings  of  the  negro  slaves  in  the 
Southern  States  had  long  excited  Brown's 
sympathy,  and  he  had  satisfied  himself  that 


208 


VICTOR  JU'dO   AMt   7//X    77.V K. 


the  fraternity  inculcated  by  the  Gospel 
ought  to  exist  in  something  more  than  name. 
His  life  had  been  devoted  to  the  abolition  of 
slavery.  A.S  a  white  man  he  had  braved 
every  risk  to  procure  the  emancipation  of 
tin-  man  of  color,  and,  to  use  the  expression 
of  his  widow.  "  his  -rival  heart  suffered  with 
the  sufferings  of  the  slaves." 

In  addition  to  his  public  spirit,  he  had  well- 
nigh  every  virtue  of  private  life.  In  his 
struggles  with  the  advocates  of  slavery  he 
had  lost  two  sons.  He  was  ill-supported  by 
the  poor  degraded  and  deinorali/.ed  creatures 
in  whose  behalf  he  labored,  and  was  at  last 
worsted  in  a  linal  engagement,  which  cost 
the  lives  of  two  more  of  his  children. 
Covered  with  wounds,  he  was  seized  and 
dragged  before  an  improvised  tribunal  of 
Virginian  slave-owners,  all  thirsting  with  a 
savage  desire  for  vengeance,.  His  blood 
trickled  over  the  mattress  on  which  he  was 
lying,  and  his  prosecutors  stood  awaiting 
some  sign  of  moral  weakness;  but  he  re- 
plied with  the  utmost  calmness  to  all  the 
questions  that  were  put  to  him,  and  received 
the  sentence  of  death  with  a  smile. 

It  was  reported  in  England  that  a  respite- 
had  been  granted.  Immediately  Victor  Hugo 
put  in  his  word.  He  addressed  to  the  Ameri- 
can Republic  a  petition  full  of  tender  elo- 
quence, urging  that  all  men  are  brethren, 
and  concluding  with  one  of  those  impas- 
sioned appeals  for  mercy  which  none  can 
write  so  well.  The  letter  made  a  deep  sen- 
sation. 

' '  Beware, "  he  said,  ' '  lest,  even  from  a  po- 
litical point  of  view,  the  execution  of  John 
Brown  prove  an  irreparable  error  that  may 
shake  the  whole  American  democracy.  From 
a  moral  standpoint  it  looks  as  though  a  por- 
tion of  the  light  of  humanity  is  being  eclipsed, 
and  the  distinction  between  justice  and  in- 
justice is  being  obscured.  The  day  seems  to 
have  dawrned  when  Liberty  assassinates  De- 
liverance ! 

"For  myself,  I  know  that  I  am  but  an 
atom;  but  yet  I  have  a  human  conscience, 
and,  urged  by  that,  I  kneel  before  the  banner 
of  the  Stars  and  Stripes  and  implore  the  illus- 
trious republic  of  America  to  preserve  the 
sanctity  of  the  universal  moral  law;  I  plead 
with  it  to  save  the  threatened  life  of  this 
John  Brown ;  to  take  down  the  scaffold,  and 
not  to  permit  before  its  very  eyes,  I  might 
almost  say  by  its  own  fault,  the  perpetration 
of  a  crime  odious  as  the  first  sad  fratricide. 
Ay,  let  America  be  aware  that  more  terrible 


than  Cain  slaying  Abel  would  be  Washington 
killing  Spartacus." 

The  Northern  States  were  roused ;  various 
manifestations  took  place  in  the  towns,  and 
religious  services  were  held.  But  the  Stale 
of  Virginia  accomplished  its  crime,  and 
Brown  was  led  to  the  gallows  by  \Yilkes 
Booth,  the  future  assassin  of  President  Lin- 
coln. 

For  the  American  martyr  Victor  Hugo 
suggested  the  epitaph — 

"  Pro  Christo,  sicut  Christus." 

The  prophecy  he  had  delivered  did  not  wait 
long  for  its  accomplishment.  In  two  years 
the  American  Union  became  out  of  joint, 
and  the  atrocious  war  between  North  and 
South  had  broken  out.  The  blood  of  John 
Brown  had  not  been  shed  without  entailing 
its  consequences. 

A -a in,  in  another  quarter,  Victor  Hugo 
laid  himself  out  to  promulgate  his  views. 
In  1862,  when  the  republic  of  Geneva  was 
revising  its  Constitution,  and  its  Constituent 
Assembly  had  carried  a  motion  for  the  re- 
tention of  capital  punishment,  which  only 
awaited  the  ratification  of  the  people,  a  num- 
ber of  the  advanced  republicans  wrote  to  the 
poet,  as  a  known  advocate  of  the  abolition  of 
the  barbarity,  and  entreated  his  intervention. 

"You  ask  my  aid,"  he  promptly  replied; 
"I  am  at  your  service.  The  question  is  of 
capital  punishment.  I  can  only  wonder  when 
this  gloomy  rock  of  Sisyphus  will  cease  to 
come  rolling  down  on  human  society  ?  When 
shall  we  begin  to  substitute  Instruction  for 
Penalty? 

"Retaliation;  eye  for  eye,  and  tooth  for 
tooth:  this  seems  to  be  about  the  sum  and 
substance  of  our  penal  code.  When  will 
Vengeance  cease  to  impose  upon  us  by  palm- 
ing herself  off  on  our  judgments  as  righteous 
Prosecution?  When  will  Felony  leave  off 
boasting  to  be  proper  State  Business?  It  is 
just  the  same  as  when  Fratricide  puts  on 
epaulets  and  calls  itself  War. 

' '  What  right  has  man  to  make  God  a  judge 
before  his  own  time?  If  a  man  be  a  believer, 
how  can  he  cast  an  immortal  soul  into  eter- 
nity? If  he  be  an  infidel,  how  can  he  cast  a 
living  being  into  annihilation?" 

After  the  publication  of  this  letter,  the 
people  of  Geneva,  in  spite  of  the  opposition 
of  the  Catholic  party,  carried  their  measure 
for  the  abolition  of  the  punishment  of  death, 
so  that  for  once  Victor  Hugo  rejoiced  in  hav- 
ing gained  his  cause. 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS  TIME. 


209 


Some  time  afterwards  he  again  raised  his 
voice  in  behalf  of  a  woman  named  Rosalie 
Doise,  who  had  been  falsely  accused  of  par- 
ricide, and,  notwithstanding  her  innocence, 
had  been  condemned  to  hard  labor  for 
life. 


In  1867  he  received  the  following  letter 
from  a  Portuguese  nobleman: 

"Humanity has  scored  a  splendid  victory. 
Your  voice,  ever  to  be  heard  where  there  is 
a  great  principle  to  defend  or  a  grand  idea 
to  be  advanced,  has  reached  us  here;  it  has 


JOIIN  BROWN. 


In  1865  he  supported  the  Central  Italian 
Committee  for  the  abolition  of  capital  pun- 
ishment. 

In  1866  he  entered  a  protest  against  Brad- 
ley's  execution  in  Jersey. 
14 


spoken  to  our  hearts ;  it  has  become  among  us 
a  reality.  Both  Chambers  of  our  Parliament 
have  recorded  their  votes  that  capital  punish- 
ment shall  be  erased  from  our  statute-book. " 
Don  Luiz,  the  young  king  of  Portugal,  had 


210 


VICTOR  UUOO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


signed  the  bill  just  before  starting  for  the 
Paris  Exhibition. 

The  victory  was  regarded  by  Vietor  Hugo 
as  a  certain  triumph  of  civilization,  and  a  no- 
ble stride  in  the  progress  of  humanity. 

Subsequently  to  this,  when  Ba/ainc  was 
condemned  to  death,  he  was  not  executed, 
whence  it  was  concluded  that  capital  punish- 
ment was  done  away  with  in  the  army.  Ac- 
cording to  Victor  Hugo's  view,  the  court- 
martial,  by  first  declaring  Ba/.aine,  as  a  mur- 
derer of  his  country,  to  be  worthy  of  death, 
and  then  deciding  that  he  should  not  die, 
gave  its  judgment  to  the  effect  that  henceforth 
neither  treason  nor  desertion,  nor  parricide 
nor  matricide  (for  murder  of  one's  country  is 
equivalent  to  murder  of  one's  mother),  should 


l>e  punishable  by  death,  and  he  held  that  the 
conclusion  was  logical  enough.  And  it  was 
owing  to  this  argument  that  in  is?.")  a  court- 
martial  spared  the  life  of  a  soldier  named 
Blanc,  who  had  been  condemned  to  be  shot 
at  Aix.  It  was  the  pamphlet  "Pour  un 
Soldat "  that  saved  the  culprit's  life. 

On  several  different  occasions  M.  Thiers 
granted  various  commutations  of  punish- 
ment entirely  through  Victor  Hugo's  inter- 
vention. 

It  lias  been  the  poet's  intention  to  issue  a 
work  entitled  "Le  Dossier  de  la  Peine  de 
Mort;"  for  such  a  book  he  would  only  have 
to  collect  the  materials  that  are  already  pre- 
pared. We  have  here  already  summarized 
the  principal  points  that  it  would  embrace. 


VICTOR  HUGO  AMD  HIS   TIME. 


211 


CHAPTER  XXVIII. 

The  People  of  Jersey  Atone  for  the  Past.— A  Marriage. — Births.— Tour  in  Zealand.—  Incognito  of  No 

Avail. — From  Antwerp  to  Middelburg — Dutch  Hospitality — An  Ovation. — Return  to  Belgium "Leg 

Chansons  des  Rues  et  dee  Bois."— Victor  Hugo  a  Musician — "Les  Travaillenrs  de  la  Mer." — "L'Homme 
qni  Rit." 


BEFORE  long  the  period  of  exile  was  to 
come  to  an  end.  It  only  remains  for  us  to 
mention  the  chief  incidents  of  that  epoch  in 
the  poet's  life. 

In  the  place  that  he  had  first  chosen  as  his 
asylum,  he  was  to  receive  an  acknowledg- 
ment of  his  uncompromising  fidelity  to  the 
service  of  liberty.  On  the  18th  of  May,  1860, 
the  walls  were  placarded  with  the  announce- 
ment that  Victor  Hugo  had  arrived  in  Jersey. 
He  had,  in  fact,  returned  for  a  single  day  at 
the  request  of  about  500  of  the  inhabitants, 
who  had  invited  him  back  to  the  island  from 
which  he  had  been  expelled,  in  order  that  he 
might  make  a  speech  in  behalf  of  the  sub- 
scription that  was  being  raised  to  assist  Gari- 
baldi in  the  liberation  of  Italy. 

It  was  not  in  Victor  Hugo's  nature  to  re- 
fuse to  mount  any  platform  that  was  reared 
in  support  of  liberty.  In  the  presence  of  an 
immense  audience,  that  was  thrilled  by  every 
word  he  uttered,  he  gave  a  vivid  picture  of 
Italy  in  her  thraldom.  It  was  a  proud  re- 
turn for  the  outlaw  to  make  to  those  who 
had  driven  him  from  their  shores,  to  plead 
among  them  the  sacred  cause  of  freedom  and 
independence. 

With  all  his  poetic  power  of  prophecy  he 
solemnly  avowed  his  conviction  that  the 
hour  was  drawing  nigh  when,  thanks  to  Gar- 
ibaldi, and  to  the  assistance  of  France  and 
England,  Italy  would  rise  from  her  death- 
slumber,  and  wake  to  life  again,  a  great  and 
glorious  nation.  Never  is  it  likely  that  Italy 
will  forget  this  intervention,  nor  be  unmind- 
ful of  the  blood  of  France  that  was  spilled  in 
vindicating  her  rights. 

On  this  occasion  the  attitude  of  the  people 
of  Jersey  was  greatly  to  their  credit.  The 
people  had  been  deceived,  and  they  now  had 
a  welcome  to  offer  to  the  man  whom  they 
felt  that  all  along  they  would  have  done  well 
to  protect.  In  doing  what  they  could  to  ac- 
knowledge the  error  of  the  past,  they  did 
well 


New  domestic  pleasures  were  now  await- 
ing the  exile.  In  1866  his  son  Charles,  in 
Brussels,  married  a  graceful  girl,  Jules  Si- 
mon's ward,  and  in  the  following  year  Victor 
Hugo  became  a  grandfather.  He  greeted 
his  little  grandson's  birth  in  a  characteristic 
letter: 

"  HAUTEVII.LB  HOUSE,  April  3, 18C7. 

"  GEORGES, — Be  born  to  duty,  grow  up  for 
liberty,  live  for  progress,  die  in  light! 

"Bear  in  thy  veins  the  gentleness  of  thy 
mother,  the  nobleness  of  thy  father.  Be 
good,  be  brave,  be  just,  be  honorable !  With 
thy  grandmother's  kiss,  receive  thy  grandfa- 
ther's blessing. " 

But  the  little  infant  was  not  destined  to 
live  long  in  the  land  of  his  father's  banish- 
ment. He  died  when  he  was  just  a  year  old. 
Fate,  however,  alternately  cruel  and  gentle, 
was  reserving  consolation  for  the  poet's  old- 
age.  Another  Georges  was  born,  not  to  blot 
out  the  remembrance  of  the  first-born,  but  to 
grow  up  in  his  place ;  and  in  course  of  time 
a  sister,  little  Jeanne,  was  added  to  the  family. 
These  two  young  folks  are  now  the  grand- 
sire's  joy  and  pride.  They  have  inspired  the 
composition  of  one  of  the  most  touching  of 
his  works,  a  book  of  which  we  shall  have  to 
speak  hereafter. 

Shortly  after  his  son's  marriage  Victor 
Hugo  made  a  tour  in  Zealand,  which  has 
been  described  with  much  grace  and  pleasant 
wit  in  a  book  written  by  Charles  Hugo,  but 
published  anonymously  under  the  title  "Vic- 
tor Hugo  en  Zelande. " 

While  certain  journals  announced  that  the 
poet  was  in  Paris  and  others  reported  him  to 
be  in  Geneva,  he  was  really  on  a  pleasure  ex- 
cursion in  Zealand  with  his  two  sons  and  a 
party  of  friends.  He  had  started  with  the 
intention  of  preserving  a  strict  incognito,  as 
he  was  anxious  to  avoid  the  ceremonious  re- 
ceptions which  he  was  aware  his  renown 
might  cause  to  be  given  him  ;  and  nowhere, 


212 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


he  thought,  could  he  travel  in  greater  privacy 
than  in  Zealand.  But  on  arriving  at  Ant- 
werp, where  they  intended  to  embark,  he 
was  recognized  by  the  chambermaid  of  the 
hotel,  who  communicated  her  discovery,  so 
that  it  came  to  the  care  of  the  captain  of  the 
•steamer.  He  accordingly  treated  his  passen- 
gers with  much  consideration  ;  and  when 
the  Teltgraaf  arrived  at  its  destination  they 
found  a  comfortable  carriage  awaiting  them, 
placed  at  their  own  disposal.  Incognito,  of 
course,  was  henceforth  out  of  the  question; 
and,  as  Charles  Hugo  puts  it,  Victor  Hugo 
had  come  to  discover  Zealand,  but  Zealand 
had  discovered  him  instead. 

Although  the  various  ovations  on  the  route 
were  somewhat  irksome,  the  trip,  on  the 
whole,  was  enjoyable.  The  poet  was  de- 
lighted with  everything  he  saw,  being  es- 
pecially struck  by  the  cleanliness  of  the 
towns.  At  eveiy  stage  of  his  journey  from 
Antwerp  to  Middelburg,  hospitality  was 
pressed  upon  him,  and  the  principal  resi- 
dents vied  with  each  other  in  soliciting 
the  honor  of  entertaining  so  renowned  a 
guest. 

The  tourists  received  an  unexpected  addi- 
tion to  their  party  through  meeting  acciden- 
tally at  a  hotel  with  a  brother  of  Stevens  the 
painter,  and  they  met  with  a  touching  inci- 
dent at  Zierkzee.  On  alighting  from  his 
char-d-bancs,  Victor  Hugo  found  himself  sur- 
rounded by  all  the  municipal  authorities ;  and 
two  little  girls,  dressed  in  white,  came  for- 
ward and  presented  him  with  splendid  bou- 
quets. 

Many  agreeable  circumstances  enlivened 
the  journey,  and  the  travellers  found  a  va- 
riety of  things  to  interest  them.  The  quaint 
architecture  particularly  attracted  Victor 
Hugo's  attention,  and  nothing  delighted  him 
more  than  to  ascend  to  the  top  of  the  high 
towers  that  are  of  frequent  occurrence.  On 
one  of  these  occasions  some  workmen  who 
were  engaged  at  the  basement  followed  him 
to  the  summit,  a  height  of  278  feet,  to  offer 
him  their  greetings. 

So  wearisome  did  the  public  homage  be- 
come that  Charles  Hugo  quite  pitied  his  fa- 
ther, calling  him  the  ' '  Jean  Val  jean  of  glory. " 
At  one  town  after  another  the  inhabitants 
made  a  point  of  putting  on  their  best  clothes 
and  decorating  their  houses  with  banners; 
and,  on  finally  quitting  Dordrecht  to  return, 
the  steamship,  the  Telegraaf,  at  a  given  sig- 
nal was  enveloped  in  a  cloud  of  colored 
bunting,  surmounted  by  the  flag  of  France, 


the  captain  saying  that  they  could  not  do 
less  than  treat  him  as  if  he  were  a  king. 

Of  all  the  homage  he  received,  none  grati- 
fied him  so  much  as  what  was  offered  by  the 
simple  and  the  poor;  and  he  came  across 
several  ministers  who  told  him  that  they 
should  be  ready  to  read  some  parts  of  "Les 
Miserables  "  from  their  pulpits.  ;m<l  that  they 
had  actually  put  it  into  the  hands  of  their 
school-children. 

After  his  return  from  Zealand,  Victor  Hugo 
spent  the  summer  in  Belgium,  in  the  pretty 
valley  of  Chaudfontaine,  where  he  put  the 
finishing  touch  to  several  of  the  later  works 
of  his  exile. 

Of  these  we  may  here  make  a  brief  notice. 

"Les  Chansons  des  Rues  et  des  Bois"  had 
appeared  in  1865.  The  barrenness  of  the 
Muse  of  the  Second  Empire  was  quite  de- 
plorable, and  it  seemed  time  to  the  poet  that 
his  voice  should  be  heard.  After  being  the 
Benvenuto  Cellini,  the  Juvenal,  and  the  Or- 
pheus of  French  literature,  he  would  now 
come  forward  as  a  song-writer.  Already  he 
had  exhibited  his  marvellous  beauty  of  style. 
He  had  created  and  animated  a  new  world; 
he  had  given  humanity  new  laws.  He  would 
now  sing  of  things  of  comparatively  less  im- 
portance, paulo  minora ;  nevertheless,  from 
the  first  page  to  the  last  of  these  harmonious 
strophes  we  find  the  poem  of  man's  youth 
alternating  with  the  poem  of  his  wisdom. 

The  reception  given  to  the  "Chansons "  at 
first  was  not  altogether  encouraging.  The 
reviewers,  always  ready  to  gratify  the  ill-will 
of  the  emperor,  made  a  point  of  pronouncing 
the  book  to  be  an  inferior  production ;  and, 
in  spite  of  its  attractive  title,  it  did  not  meet 
with  favor  from  the  imperial  Zoileans.  But 
it  may  be  said  to  be  just  what  was  wanting 
to  complete  the  master's  glory.  He  exhibits 
himself  under  a  new  aspect.  In  an  infinite 
variety  of  verse  he  describes  the  living  off- 
spring of  nature  which  is  visible  to  poets 
alone,  and  he  writes  his  melodies  even  as  it 
were  at  the  dictation  of  the  woods  and  mead- 
ows themselves. 

Without  abandoning  the  traditional  Pega- 
sus, he  has  curbed  it,  and  made  it  canter  in 
the  flowery  fields  of  idyl ;  and  all  the  poems 
are  so  arranged  that  their  harmony  may  be 
fully  grasped  by  any  one  who  reads  them  in 
their  orderly  connection.  Some  of  them  are 
like  flourishes  of  trumpets,  some  of  them  like 
whispers  of  love.  For  ' '  Jeanne  seule  "  and 
for  others  he  describes  "  1'eternal  petit  Ro- 
man," introducing  pictures  of  delightful 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


213 


freshness;  he  lingers  over  a  bird's-nest  and 
inhales  the  fragrance  of  the  forest  flower  till 
he  anticipates  the  time  of  peace,  when  wars 
shall  be  no  more;  he  dwells  upon  the  thought 
that  the  same  nature  which  teaches  youth  to 
love  teaches  man  to  do  his  duty;  and  he  en- 


to  say  this  of  a  man  who  never  professed  to 
have  any  musical  bias  at  all,  and  in  whose 
house  Charles  Monselet  has  observed  that  the 
complete  works  of  Viennet  were  far  more 
likely  to  be  found  than  a  pianoforte  or  any 
other  musical  instrument.  It  was  Charles 


AN  OVATION. 


dows  the  noble  oak  with  speech,  and  makes 
its  mighty  strength  become  the  witness  to  the 
glory  of  Liberty,  Equality,  and  Fraternity. 

In  every  page  of  the  book  the  author  re- 
veals himself  as  having  the  soul  of  a  true 
musician,  however  paradoxical  it  may  appear 


Monselet,  one  of  the  most  refined  writers  of 
our  time,  though  not  yet  an  Academician, 
who  composed  a  good-humored  parody  upon 
Victor  Hugo's  production.  He  called  it 
"  Une  Chansonette  des  Rues  et  des  Bois,"  of 
which  he  says,  ' '  I  did  not  put  my  name  to 


214 


VICTOR  IIUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


it,  but  I  have  never  denied  being  the  author." 
It  was  he  also  who  declared  of  Victor  Hugo 
that  he  was  really  a  great  musician,  and  that 
he  composed  graud  overtures,  of  which  he 

cite-  one  a.s  an  example: 

"Hark!  how  the  bow  now  trembles  in  the  leader's 

h  « iid, 
Mores  o'er  the  answering  strings  and  stirs  the 

waiting  band ! 

The  orchestra  below,  concealed  from  curious  eye, 
Wakes  at  the  bidding  and  clangs  oat  shrill  reply. 
Just  as  in  silent  eve,  whence  th'  unseen  vineyard  lies, 
The  laughter  of  grape-gatherers  takes  us  by  sur- 
prise ; 

Then  next  the  alto  of  the  mellow  flute  ascends, 
Like  graceful  capital  in  which  a  column  euds ; 
Next,  rising,   falling,  sweeping    through    the   all- 
around, 
The  scales  first  fill.then  empty.all  the  vase  of  sound." 

These  verses  form  a  portion  of  a  piece  en- 
titled "  Que  la  Musique  date  du  Seizieme 
Si£cle,"  and  Monselet  asks  whether  it  might 
not  be  signed  by  Herold  or  Rossini. 

Victor  Hugo's  musical  temperament  in- 
deed appears  at  every  turn  of  his  work. 
Putting  aside  his  dramatic  poem  of  "La 
Esmeralda,"  that  was  composed  expressly  for 
the  opera,  do  not ' '  Ernani, "  ' '  Rigoletto, "  and 
"  Lucrezia  Borgia"  mark  him  out  as  well- 
nigh  the  first  librettist  of  the  century  ?  He 
has  written  romances  that  must  be  prized 
as  gems,  and  ' '  Les  Chansons  des  Rues  et  des 
Bois"  must  be  esteemed  as  a  casket  full  of 
them.  Certain  couplets,  too,  introduced  into 
' '  Les  Miserables  "  will  occur  to  the  reader. 
Music  must  be  allowed  to  be  frequently  in 
his  thoughts,  and  there  are  some  of  his 
poems,  the  "Guitares,"  the  "  Autres  Gui- 
tares,"  and  some  of  the  musical  masses  in  the 
"Chansons,"  of  which  it  might  be  said  that 
Cherubini  offers  nothing  better. 

The  poems  were  succeeded  in  1866  by  an- 
other important  work,  "Les  Travailleurs  de 
la  Mer."  The  author  announced  the  com- 
pletion of  this  in  a  letter  published  in  the 
newspapers. 

' '  My  desire  in  these  volumes  has  been  to 
glorify  work,  will,  devotion,  and  whatever 
makes  man  great.  I  have  made  it  a  point  to 
demonstrate  how  the  most  insatiable  abyss  is 
the  human  heart,  and  what  escapes  the  sea 
does  not  escape  a  woman." 

And  in  the  book  itself  he  wrote: 

"I  dedicate  this  work  to  the  rock  of  hospi- 
tality and  liberty;  to  the  corner  of  the  old 
Norman  country  inhabited  by  the  noble  little 
people  of  the  sea;  to  the  Isle  of  Guernsey, 
rugged  yet  gentle,  my  refuge  for  the  present, 
and  probably  my  grave  in  the  future!" 


In  this  marvellous  story  it  was  his  aim  to 
complete  his  study  of  the  struggles  of  the 
human  race.  We  are  weighed  down  by  a 
triple  iit'uyKii — that  is  to  say,  by  the  fatal  ne- 
cessity of  dogmas,  of  laws,  and  of  circum- 
stances. In  "Notre  Dame  de  Paris"  he  ha«. 
denounced  the  first,  in  "Les  Miserables"  he 
has  depicted  the  second,  and  he  here  proceeds 
to  illustrate  the  third.  He  does  not  now 
bring  forward  the  great  agitations  of  history, 
nor  the  events  of  contemporary  revolution; 
he  gives  a  picture  of  the  life  of  a  seaboard 
people,  and  within  a  wild  and  majestic  frame- 
work places  at  once  a  drama  and  an  idyl. 

By  its  vigorous  simplicity,  by  the  severity 
of  its  style,  by  the  sombre  coloring  that  per- 
vades it,  the  book  affords  an  admirable  ex- 
ample of  its  author's  power.  As  a  lyrical 
poet  he  haunts  the  realms  of  light;  as  a 
dramatist  he  analyzes  every  sentiment  of 
woe;  and  like  a  gifted  painter  he  repro- 
duces the  dazzling  tints  of  the  sea,  the  mys- 
terious hues  of  the  subterranean  vaults,  and 
the  movement  of  the  boisterous  waves.  When 
he  describes  the  combat  between  man  and 
the  brute  forces  of  nature,  he  endows  the  in- 
furiated elements  with  a  soul,  investing  them 
with  the  attributes  of  love,  wrath,  hypocrisy, 
and  hatred,  just  as  though  they  were  ani- 
mate with  human  passions. 

But  although  the  more  these  pages  are 
studied  the  more  they  are  to  be  admired,  yet 
they  had  their  detractors;  there  were  plenty 
of  critics  to  run  them  down,  and  they  re- 
proached the  author  for  his  power,  though 
this  was  only  as  if  they  found  fault  with  an 
eminence  for  making  a  man  giddy,  or  as  if  they 
reproved  a  rock  for  being  rugged.  The  fault- 
linders,  moreover,  discovered  all  kinds  of 
grievances.  The  language  was  too  idiomatic' ; 
the  author  had  used  terms  that  no  French 
dictionary  warranted;  nay,  he  had  actually 
employed  Guernsey  words  that  betrayed  a 
Celtic  or  Teutonic  origin!  The  very  char- 
acter of  such  criticism  is  its  own  condem- 
nation,and  cannot  be  reprobated  too  severely. 

Three  years  after  this,  Victor  Hugo,  in 
1869,  brought  out  another  book  which 
proved  equally  successful.  He  called  it 
"L'Homme  qui  Hit."  This  work  abounds 
with  scenes  of  pathetic  interest,  but,  like 
everything  else  that  the  author  produced,  it 
evoked  a  great  deal  of  adverse  criticism,  not 
a  few  writers  professing  that  they  were  un- 
able to  comprehend  it.  But  no  criticism 
availed  to  check  its  sale. 

Parodies,  of  course,  followed  its  appear- 


THE   EXILE'S  ROCK   IN   GUERNSEY. 
(From  a  Photograph  by  Aur/uste  Vacquerie.) 


216 


VICTOR  IIUGO  AND  11IS   TIME. 


ance.  Some  of  those  were  written  in  a  good- 
humored  style,  and  bear  their  own  -witness 
to  the  impression  that  the  original  made; 
some,  on  the  other  hand,  were  rancorous  and 
full  of  spleen. 

The  book  is  a  singular  mixture  of  the 
horrible  and  the  graceful.  Victor  Hugo  de- 
lights in  antithesis;  and  here  in  his  favorite 
way  he  joins  moral  beauty  to  physical  de- 


formity, and  moral  ugliness  to  physical  grace. 
G  wynplaine  the  mountebank,  and  Josiane  the 
duchess,  have  become  immortal  types  of  char- 
acter ;  and  though  detraction  may  do  its 
worst,  the  love -passages  of  Dea  will  never 
be  effaced  from  the  memory  of  those  who 
read  them. 

"L'Hommc  qui  Rit "  is  another  master- 
piece. 


'L'HOMME  QUI  RIT." 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS  TIME, 


217 


CHAPTER  XXIX. 

Victor  Hugo's  Admiration  of  Shakespeare.— The  Paris  Exhibition  of  1867 "The  Paris  Guide."— The  Re- 
production of  "Hernani." — "La  Voix  de  Gueruesey."— Letter  to  the  Young  Poets. — Literary  Movement 

under  the  Second  Empire.—  Le  Jiappel.—lts  Contributors.— A  Manifesto Summary  of  the  Works  of 

the  Exile. 


AMONG  Victor  Hugo's  other  works  we 
must  not  omit  to  reckon  his  magnificent  es- 
say upon  Shakespeare,  a  review  which  is  as 
fine  a  tribute  as  has  ever  been  offered  to  the 
immortal  English  dramatist.  He  had  already 
associated  himself  with  the  festivities  that 
had  been  observed  in  honor  of  the  great 
bard,  and  had  contributed  his  own  meed  of 
homage. 

In  his  study  of  Shakespeare  he  has  mani- 
fested his  veneration  for  the  poet,  who,  like 
himself,  had  searched  the  depths  of  the  hu- 
man heart;  and  he  calls  attention  to  the  faith- 
ful translation  of  the  plays  that  had  been 
made  by  his  son. 

The  time  was  at  hand  when  Victor  Hugo's 
own  dramas  were  to  be  the  theme  of  general 
interest. 

The  exhibition  of  1867  was  made  the  occa- 
sion of  the  publication  of  a  large  work  upon 
Paris  called  "  The  Paris  Guide."    A  number 
of  eminent  writers  took  part  in  the  compila- : 
t'on  of  the  volume,  and  Victor  Hugo  was  i 
commissioned  to  write  a  preface,  or  rather  a 
conspectus  of  the  whole.     He  performed  his 
task  in  his  own  elegant  style,  every  line  ' 
sparkling  as  it  were  with  the  brilliancy  of  a 
sky-rocket. 

His  contribution  to  the  book  made  con- ! 
siderable  sensation,  but  even  this  was  soon 
outdone  by  a  circumstance  which  procured 
him  his  proper  honor,  of  which  he  had  been  j 
defrauded  so  long.     The  first  Empire  had 
left  literature  in  a  state  of  absolute  nudity,  I 
and  the  second  had  checked  the  magnificent ! 
flight  it  had  taken  since  the  restoration  of 
1830  ;  but,  though  a  man  may  originate  a 
coup  d'etat,  he  may  still  be   too   weak  to  ! 
crush  out  genius. 

While  the  emperor  in  1867  was  displaying 
the  embellishments  of  the  capital  and  the  | 
glories  of  the  Exhibition  to  his  innumerable 
visitors,  he  felt  the  demand  that  existed  for 
the  production  of  new  dramas.  The  man- 
agers of  the  theatres  were  utterly  at  a  loss ; ! 


there  was  absolutely  nothing  for  them  to- 
bring  out  in  the  way  of  novelties.  At  the 
best  houses  the  sterility  was  absolutely  de- 
pressing, while  at  the  second-rate  theatres  no- 
resource  seemed  to  be  left  but  the  repetition 
of  the  sensational  melodramas,  with  their 
trap-door  tricks,  and  the  introduction  of  half- 
naked  women  singing  obscene  songs  utterly 
void  of  wit.  Many  of  those  heterogeneous 
visitors,  however,  were  quite  capable  of  form- 
ing a  just  judgment  in  dramatic  matters,  and, 
conscious  of  this,  the  Minister  of  Fine  Arts 
ventured  to  point  out  to  the  emperor  that  the 
world  would  be  making  remarks  upon  the 
decay,  and  would  be  asking  what  had  be- 
come of  the  literary  talent  of  the  nation. 

The  Comedie  Francaise  had  positively 
nothing  in  its  repertory  but  what  was  uni- 
versally known,  and  nothing  modern  offered 
itself  for  its  acceptance  that  was  likely  to  at- 
tract the  crowd.  In  the  midst  of  the  perplex- 
ity Victor  Hugo's  name  began  to  be  timidly 
whispered,  and  after  very  considerable  hesi- 
tation it  was  arranged  that  "Hernani" 
should  be  brought  out  at  the  Theatre  Fran- 
cais,  and  ' '  Ruy  Bias  "  at  the  Odeon. 

A  variety  of  circumstances  that  it  would 
be  tedious  to  relate  long  delayed  the  produc- 
tion of  "Ruy  Bias,"  but  on  the  20th  of  June 
"Hernani"  was  performed  by  a  company 
worthy  of  the  work;  Delaunay  took  the  part 
of  Hernani,  Bressant  that  of  Don  Carlos, 
Maubant  that  of  Ruy  Gomez,  the  role  of 
Dona  Sol  being  allotted  to  Mile.  Favart. 

Immense  interest  was  taken  in  the  repro- 
duction of  the  piece.  More  than  20,000  ap- 
plications were  made  for  places  at  the  first 
performance.  Great  importance  was  attrib- 
uted to  the  event;  not  only  had  the  young 
men  of  letters  (who  of  course  knew  all  about 
the  conflict  of  1830)  never  had  an  opportuni- 
ty hitherto  of  seeing  the  piece,  but  there  was 
a  great  probability  that  politics  would  be 
dragged  into  the  affair.  It  appeared  quite 
likely  that  a  demonstration  would  be  made 


218 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS  TIME. 


against  the  political  principles  of  the  exiled 
author,  about  whose  genius  there  could  be 
no  dispute.  It  is  said  that  every  precaution 
was  taken  to  maintain  order,  and  even  that 
a  certain  number  of  troops  was  kept  ready 
tn  interfere  in  case  of  need. 

The  public,  when  admitted,  consisted  of 
several  sections.  There  were  numerous  of- 
ficials ready  to  make  opposition  to  any  po- 
litical manifestation  ;  and  there  were  not 
a  few  of  those  who  had  been  present  at 
the  riotous  performances  in  1830,  and  were 
now  prepared  to  applaud  with  all  the  vehe- 
mence of  defiance,  and  applaud  they  did. 
But  there  were  none  to  contend  against  them ; 
their  old  adversaries  had  disappeared,  and 
in  the  new  generation  there  was  nobody  who 
could  want  to  hiss  verses  such  as  had  never 
been  written  since  the  days  of  Corneille. 

An  eminent  critic,  M.  Francisque  Sarcey, 
who  now  admires  Victor  Hugo  as  much  as 
he  then  depreciated  him,  after  the  first 
night's  performance  published  a  notice  in 
which  he  pretended  that  the  acclamations  that 
greeted  the  piece  had  nothing  voluntary  in 
them,  but  were  merely  outbursts  made  at  a 
preconcerted  signal.  And  perhaps  there 
was  some  ground  for  the  suspicion,  as  on  the 
opening  night  the  house  was  to  a  very  con- 
siderable extent  filled  with  officials  charged 
to  maintain  order.  On  the  next  night,  how- 
ever, there  could  be  no  mistake ;  the  theatre 
was  crowded  with  an  independent  audience ; 
the  vociferous  applause  was  entirely  genu- 
ine, and  for  eighty  nights  afterwards  the 
assembly  listened  with  an  admiration  almost 
amounting  to  awe,  yielding  the  tribute  of 
their  homage  in  a  measure  ample  enough  to 
realize  the  author's  most  ambitious  dreams. 

A  concourse  of  the  young  authors  of  the 
day,  exulting  in  the  grand  success,  lost  no 
time  in  addressing  the  following  letter  to  the 
poet: 

"MASTER  MOST  DEAR  AND  MOST  ILLUS- 
TRIOUS,— We  hail  with  enthusiastic  delight 
the  reproduction  of  '  Hernaui.' 

"The  fresh  triumph  of  the  greatest  of 
French  poets  fills  us  with  transport.  The 
night  of  the  20th  of  June  is  an  era  in  our 
existence. 

"Yet  sorrow  mingles  with  our  joy.  Your 
absence  was  felt  by  your  associates  of  1830; 
still  more  was  it  bewailed  by  us  younger 
men,  who  never  yet  have  shaken  hands  with 
the  author  of  '  La  Legende  des  Siecles. '  At 
least,  they  cannot  resist  sending  you  this 


tribute  of  their  regard  and  unbounded  ad- 
miration. 
"Signed, 

"  SULLY  PRUDHOMME,  ARM  AND  SILVES- 
TRE,  FRANCOIS  COPPEE,  GEORGES 
LAFENESTRE,  LEON  VALADE,  LEON 
DIERX,  JEAN  AICARD,  PAUL  VER- 
LAINE,  ALBERT  HERAT,  ANDRE 
THEURIET,  ARMAND  RENAUD,  Louis 
XAVIER  DE  RICARD,  H.  CAZALI,  ER- 
NEST D'HERVILLY." 

This  letter,  thus  signed  by  names  many  of 
which  have  since  become  famous,  was  at  the 
time  a  token  of  courage  as  well  as  a  grace- 
ful tribute.  It  was  forwarded  to  Brussels, 
whence  the  poet  sent  back  his  reply: 

"DEAR  POETS, — The  literary  revolution 
of  1830  was  the  corollary  of  the  revolution 
of  1789;  it  is  the  specialty  of  our  century. 
I  am  the  humble  soldier  of  the  advance.  I 
fight  for  revolution  in  every  form,  literary 
as  well  as  social.  Liberty  is  my  principle, 
progress  my  law,  the  ideal  my  type. 

"  I  ask  you,  my  young  brethren,  to  accept 
my  acknowledgments. 

' '  At  my  time  of  life,  the  end — that  is  to  say, 
the  infinite — seems  very  near.  The  approach- 
ing hour  of  departure  from  this  world  leaves 
little  time  for  other  than  serious  meditations. 
But  while  I  am  thus  preparing  to  depart, 
your  eloquent  letter  is  very  precious  to  me ; 
it  makes  me  dream  of  being  among  you,  and 
the  illusion  bears  to  the  reality  the  sweet  re- 
semblance of  the  sunset  to  the  sunrise.  You 
bid  me  welcome  while  I  am  making  ready 
for  a  long  farewell. 

"Thanks:  I  am  absent  because  it  is  my 
duty.  My  resolution  is  not  to  be  shaken ;  but 
my  heart  is  with  you. 

"  I  am  proud  to  have  my  name  encircled 
by  yours,  which  are  to  me  a  crown  of  stars. 
"VICTOR  HUGO." 

The  performance  of  "Hernani"  was  not 
authorized  for  long.  Not  content  with  hav- 
ing banished  the  man,  the  Emperor  Napoleon 
III.  could  not  rest  without  trying  to  banish 
his  sentiments.  Only  at  the  end  of  his  reign, 
and  that  after  much  difficulty, was  he  induced 
to  tolerate  the  representation  of  "Lucrece 
Borgia  "  at  the  Porte-Saint-Martin.  This  per- 
formance was  a  great  success  for  Marie  Lau- 
rent, and  drew  forth  from  Georges  Sand  a 
striking  letter  to  Victor  Hugo,  in  which  she 
said: 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


219 


"I  was  present  thirty-seven  years  ago  at 
the  first  representation  of  'LucrtSce,'  and  I 
shed  tears  of  grief;  with  a  heart  full  of  joy  I 
leave  the  performance  of  this  day.  I  still 
hear  the  acclamations  of  the  crowd  as  they 
shout  'Vive  Victor  Hugo!'  as  though  you 
were  really  coming  to  hear  them." 

Another  poem  of  Victor  Hugo's  appeared 
in  1867.  It  was  issued  under  the  title  "  La 
Voix  de  Guernesey,"  its  object  being  to  stig- 
matize the  Mentana  expedition,  and  to  con- 
sole Garibaldi  under  the  defeat  which  he  had 
sustained  from  the  Pope  and  his  ally  Bona- 
parte. In  an  apostrophe  to  Pius  IX.  the  poet 
addressed  him  in  the  language  of  stern  se- 
verity: 

"  Ill-starred  old  man !  to  thee  the  ravenous  vultures 

owe 

Their  feast  of  skulls  unearthed  from  scanty  soil  be- 
low I 

Responsible  art  thou  for  ravens  boding  ill, 
Thy  gloomy  visions  now  the  open  tombs  fulfil. 

•"The  mitrailleuse  hast  thou  invited ;  and  now  see 
How  that  the  dying  owe  their  carnage  all  to  thee ! 
Go,  say  thy  mass ;  but  first  go  wash  thy  crimson 

hand ; 

Thus  stained  with  blood,  how  canst  thou  at  the  altar 
stand?" 

It  may  easily  be  imagined  how  such  lan- 
guage stirred  up  the  wrath  of  the  clerical 
press,  especially  when  it  is  added  that  no  less 
than  seventeen  translations  of  the  poem,  some 
of  them  in  verse,  appeared  simultaneously  in 
many  languages.  Garibaldi  replied  to  Vic- 
tor Hugo  in  some  French  verses  which  he 
called  "Mentana,"  thousands  of  copies  of 
which  crossed  the  frontier  and  found  their 
way  to  Paris.  Imperial  indignation  was  kin- 
dled, and  not  only  was  the  performance  of 
"  Hernani"  stopped,  but  a  letter  was  sent  to 
the  poet  in  Guernsey : 

"  The  manager  of  the  imperial  Theatre  de 
1'Odeon  has  the  honor  to  inform  M.Victor 
Hugo  that  the  reproduction  of  '  Ruy  Bias ' 
is  forbidden.  CHILLY." 

Victor  Hugo  at  once  replied,  directing  his 
answer  not  to  the  Theatre  de  1'Odeon,  but  to 
the  Tuileries: 

"  To  M.  Louis  Bonaparte: 

"  SIR, — It  is  you  that  I  hold  responsible  for 
the  letter  which  I  have  just  received  signed 
'  Chilly. '  •  VICTOR  HUGO.  " 

The  document  really  reached  its  destina- 
tion. Many  letters  despatched  by  the  poet 


had  not  the  same  good-fortune;  most  of  them 
were  read  upon  passing  the  frontier,  and  not 
a  few  of  them  were  confiscated.  It  was  in 
vain  that  he  availed  himself  of  Art.  187  in 
the  Penal  Code,  and  wrote  upon  his  enve- 
lopes ' '  On  private  affairs  only  ;"  the  secret 
officers  of  the  government  did  not  hesitate  to 
unseal  and  examine  all  his  communications. 
Doubtless  they  thought  that  they  had  ample 
warrant  for  their  proceedings ;  they  were  well 
aware  that  between  him  and  his  correspond- 
ents mutual  pledges  in  behalf  of  liberty  were 
continually  being  exchanged,  and  that  the 
young  men  of  the  rising  generation,  in  their 
aspirations  for  freedom,  were  being  fortified 
and  encouraged  by  the  advice  and  counsel  of 
the  exile. 

For  himself,  not  unhappy  in  the  present, 
and  hopeful  for  the  future,  he  waited  on. 
He  rejected  the  amnesty  of  1859,  and  volun- 
tarily remained  in  his  expatriation;  he  held 
to  the  doctrine  that  the  guilty  have  no  right 
to  offer  pardon  to  the  innocent,  even  as  it  is 
not  the  place  of  an  executioner  to  provide 
a  respite  for  a  criminal.  With  still  greater 
decision  did  he  scorn  the  proffered  amnesty 
of  1869 :  he  had  already  placed  his  vow  on  rec- 
ord that  he  would  never  again  visit  the  land 
which  was  "the  resting-place  of  his  ancestors 
and  the  birthplace  of  his  love,"  until  liberty 
had  been  restored  to  her;  he  had  vowed  that 
he  must  enter  France  in  company  with  right, 
or  he  would  not  enter  at  all.  To  these  vows 
he  was  never  for  a  moment  untrue. 

Notwithstanding  his  compulsory  absence 
from  his  country,  his  activity  in  political 
matters  remained  very  considerable,  and  be- 
came still  more  so  when  Le  Rappel  was  start- 
ed on  the  4th  of  May,  1869.  It  was  the  eve 
of  the  general  election,  and  in  order  to  con- 
tinue the  battle  that  had  been  commenced  by 
Rochefort  in  La  LanUrne  it  was  considered 
necessary  to  establish  a  paper  of  sufficient 
power  to  be  a  telling  organ  with  the  democ- 
racy and  to  influence  the  popular  vote.  To 
render  such  an  enterprise  a  success,  it  was  in- 
dispensable that  the  services  of  men  of  tried 
courage  and  of  known  reputation  should  be 
secured.  Just  the  men  for  the  task  were  the 
old  staff  of  L' fivenement,  and  they  were  ready 
enough  to  undertake  the  responsibility  and 
to  fight  to  the  very  end.  Thus  it  came  about 
that  the  new  journal  was  committed  to  Charles 
and  Francois  Hugo,  Auguste  Vacquerie,  and 
Paul  Meurice.  They  were  subsequently 
joined  by  Rochefort,  than  whom  no  one  had 
been  more  successful,  by  the  brilliancy  of  his 


220 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  UIS  TIME. 


epigrams,  in  assaulting  the  outworks  of  the 
citadel  of  the  Empire. 

The  characters  of  Charles  and  Francois 
Hugo  have  been  already  indicated,  and  we 


poet  has  rendered  them  the  high  praise  they 
have  deserved,  professing  himself  proud  of 
their  friendship,  their  integrity,  and  their 
talent ;  he  has  dedicated  verses  to  them, 


PAUL  MEURICE. 


shall  have  further  occasion  to  refer  to  their 
magnanimity;  something,  moreover,  has  been 
said  of  Victor  Hugo's  two  faithful  friends, 
Vacquerie  and  Meurice.  Many  a  time-  the 


consoling  them  when  assailed  with  slander, 
and  encouraging  them  when  called  upon  to 
submit  to  sacrifice.  It  has  been  through  dif- 
ficulty, but  their  way  has  led  them  to  honor. 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


221 


Paul  Meurice  is  one  of  our  great  masters 
in  the  art  of  writing.  All  his  works,  his  ro- 
mances and  his  dramas,  mark  him  out  as  a 
first-rate  author;  his  ideas  are  as  original  as 
they  are  intellectual, while  the  united  strength 
and  simplicity  of  his  style,  the  clearness  and 
taste  of  his  composition,  his  grace  of  manner 
and  honesty  of  purpose,  cannot  fail  to  raise 


returned  to  Paris,  and,  without  ceasing  to  be 
both  poet  and  artist,  devoted  himself  to  the 
office  of  journalist,  in  which  he  has  not  many 
superiors.  For  ten  years,  day  after  day,  he 
has  produced  articles,  written  upon  the  spur 
of  the  moment,  that  have  invariably  been  re- 
markable for  vigor  and  good  -  sense,  inflexi- 
ble in  principle,  and  energetic  in  defence  of 


AUGUSTE  VACQTJERIE. 


him  to  a  high  pedestal  among  the  literary 
worthies  of  the  century. 

Auguste  Vacquerie  is  also  an  original  char- 
acter, and  his  name,  like  that  of  his  friend 
and  brother-in-arms,  is  synonymous  with  tal- 
ent, uprightness,  and  energy.  He  has  faith 
in  art  and  he  has  faith  in  the  Republic,  which 
nothing  can  shake.  After  having  long  been 
an  exile  by  his  own  choice,  he  foresaw  that 
the  day  of  liberty  was  about  to  return;  he 


right.     His  work  may  well  deserve  the  re- 
spect of  posterity. 

Under  such  an  editorship  as  this,  it  was 
only  to  be  expected  that  Le  Bappel  would 
prove  an  unprecedented  success.  Foresee- 
ing the  reception  it  would  undoubtedly  com- 
mand, the  imperial  authorities  forbade  its 
sale  in  the  public  thoroughfares ;  but  in  spite 
of  the  prohibition  it  is  said  that  180,000  copies 
were  printed,  and  that  all  the  presses  at  the 


222 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


disposal  of  the  journal  were  quite  inadequate 
to  meet  the  demands  of  the-  population,  pur- 
chasers frequently  lighting  for  the  successive 
editions. 

For  those  weary  of  servitude  or  worn  out 
with  degradation,  Le  Rappel  beat  the  call  of 
honor. 

As  a  contribution  to  the  opening  number, 
Victor  Hugo  wrote  a  manifesto  consisting  of 
an  address  to  the  five  co-editors: 

"LE   K.U'PKI.. 

"It  is  a  call.  I  love  the  word  in  every 
sense.  It  is  the  call  to  principle  by  con- 
science; the  call  to  truth  by  philosophy;  tin- 
call  to  duty  by  right ;  the  call  to  the  dead  by 
reverence;  the  call  to  punishment  by  equity; 
the  call  to  the  past  by  history;  the  call  to  the 
future  by  logic ;  the  call  to  action  by  courage ; 
the  call  to  idealism  by  thought;  the  call  to 
science  by  experiment ;  the  call  to  God  in  re- 
ligion by  the  extirpation  of  idolatry;  the  call 
to  the  people's  sovereignty  by  universal  suf- 
frage; the  call  to  humanity  by  free  educa- 
tion; the  call  to  liberty  by  the  awakening  of 
France  and  by  the  stirring  cry  '  Fiat  jus  T 

"You  say,  this  is  our  task!  I  say,  this  is 
your  work!" 

The  circumstances  of  the  poet  did  not  per- 
mit him  to  take  any  share  in  the  daily  labor, 
but  his  heart  was  ever  with  those  who  con- 
tinued the  struggle,  and  who  were  reinforced 
by  the  assistance  of  Arthur  Arnould,  Jules 
Claretie,  and  by  a  pleiad  of  young  authors 
of  decided  merit.  The  paper  had  to  undergo 
repeated  prosecutions,  the  detailed  account 
of  which  would  be  superfluous,  but  it  stood 
its  ground  triumphing  over  all  opposition. 
It  did  a  good  work  in  enlightening  the  minds 
of  many,  especially  of  the  young,  and  there 
are  few  who  are  not  aware  what  good  service 
was  done  by  Le  Rappel  in  hastening  forward 
the  day  of  justice  to  the  nation. 

In  1870,  Napoleon  had  begun  to  feel  the 
ground,  sensibly  trembling  under  his  feet, 
and  devised  the  scheme  of  shoring  up  his 
tottering  throne  by  a  plebiscite.  Consulted 
about  this  proposal  for  a  plebiscite,  Victor 
Hugo  gave  it  a  most  outspoken  negative,  and 
proceeded  to  deliver  his  reasons  in  a  vigor- 
ous article  in  the  paper.  He  asked  why  the 
people  should  be  invited  to  vote  for  the  com- 
pletion of  a  crime ;  he  declared  that  the  scheme 
should  be  treated  with  all  the  contempt  it 
deserved,  concluding  what  he  wrote  with  this 
outburst  of  his  indignation : 


"  While  the  author  of  the  c<»n>  il','t,it  wants 
to  put  a  question  to  the  people,  we  would  ask 
him  to  put  this  question  to  himself :  'Ought  I, 
Napoleon,  to  quit  the  Tuileries  for  the  Con- 
eierirerie  and  to  put  myself  at  the  disposal  of 
justice?' 

"'Ye>:'  VICTOR  HUGO." 

Immediately  the  journal  was  prosecuted 
and  the  law-courts  passed  judgment  against 
the  author  of  the  article.  15ut  these  reverses 
were  the  harbinger  of  better  days. 

Perhaps  we  may  be  allowed  to  pause  here 
awhile  and  make  a  general  r<-x>nn<'  of  the 
poet's  political  action  during  the  prolonged 
period  of  his  exile.  And  this  can  hardly  be 
given  more  completely  than  in  the  words 
in  which  Auguste  Vacquerie  has  made  his 
retrospect  of  the  time: 

' '  How  far  Victor  Hugo  has  fulfilled  his 
duty,  and  to  what  extent  he  lias  acted  up  to 
the  spirit  of  the  immortal  verse 

"  'Though  only  one  remain,  that  oiie  shall  be  myself,' 

is  universally  known. 

"From  every  quarter  he  received  perpetual 
appeals.  The  bereaved  sought  him  out  to 
speak  at  the  grave-side  of  the  dear  ones  they 
had  lost,  and  he  delivered  funeral  orations 
over  Jean  Bousquet,  Louise  Julien,  and 
Felix  Bany;  he  was  urged  to  use  his  pen  in 
condemnation  of  the  gallows,  and  he  wrote 
remonstrances  against  the  execution  of 
Tapner  and  of  Bradley,  and  he  eulogized 
John  Brown  as  the  great  deliverer  of  the 
blacks. 

"By  an  emperor  expatriated,  for  an  em- 
peror he  entreated  pardon  —  Juarez.  He 
responded  to  the  appeal  of  the  people  of 
Crete.  He  denounced  tile  suppression  of  the 
revolt  in  Cuba  as  brutal,  and  he  took  up  the 
petition  of  the  three  hundred  women  who 
had  fled  to  New  York  for  refuge.  He  was 
invited  to  Lausanne  to  preside  at  the  Peace 
Congress.  To  him  it  was  that  Ireland 
turned  with  supplications  that  he  would 
take  up  the  defence  of  the  convicted  Fe- 
nians. 

"  Not  one  of  these  appeals  did  he  reject. 

"And  this  by  no  means  represented  all  his 
work.  Amid  his  labors  he  gave  to  an  ad- 
miring world  '  Napoleon  le  Petit,'  '  Les  CM- 
timents, ' '  Les  Contemplations, '  '  La  Legende 
des  Siecles,'  '  Les  Chansons  des  Rues  et  des 
Bois,'  '  Shakespeare,'  ' Les  Travailleurs  de  la 
Mer,'  'Les  Miserables,'  and  'L'Homme  qui 
Kit.' 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


223 


"  One  thing,  too,  there  is  worthy  of  all  note. 
Throughout  these  nineteen  years  of  incessant 
struggle,  this  duel  with  the  Empire,  this  hand- 
to-hand  conflict  with  tyranny  in  every  shape, 
Victor  Hugo  remained  uniformly  calm  and 
placid. 

"  Expelled  from  France  for  defending  the 
rights  of  the  people,  driven  from  Brussels  as 
the  result  of  publishing  '  Napoleon  le  Petit, ' 
banished  from  Jersey  because  he  had  written 
'  Les  Chatiments,'  he  nevertheless  was  as  full 


of  spirits  in  Guernsey,  at  last,  as  ever  he  had 
been  in  Paris. 

"  He  lived  among  his  family,  finding  in  his 
wife  a  noble  consoler  of  his  exile,  until  she 
died,  in  1868. 

"Other  sorrows  came  to  overcloud  the 
career  of  the  illustrious  poet,  and  he  had  ere 
long  to  shed  more  bitter  tears  of  grief;  but 
at  length  the  hour  for  which  he  had  been 
waiting — the  hour  of  justice — drew  near,  and 
finally  arrived." 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


CHAPTER  XXX. 

Betarn  to  France.— Distressing  Journey — Popular  Ovation  on  Arrival. —  The  Siege.— A  Cry  for  Peace.— 
A  Cry  for  War.  —  Public  Performances. — Proceeds  Purchasing  Cannon — Strange  Diet.  —  Improvised 
Verses. — Walks  on  the  Ramparts. — Victor  Ilugo's  Admiration  of  the  People  of  Paris. 


THE  plebiscite  was  destined  to  lead  France 
to  Sedan.  There  had  been  a  promise  of 
"peace."  but  it  had  only  led  to  war,  and 
consequently  to  the  dismemberment  of  the 
Empire — the  result  inevitable  under  such  a 
government  as  that  which  dated  from  the  3d 
of  December. 

At  the  first  news  of  the  disaster  of  1870 
Victor  Hugo  left  Hauteville  House  and  has- 
tened to  Brussels,  in  order  that  he  might  be 
as  near  as  possible  to  his  country  in  the  try- 
ing hour  of  her  distress. 

The  capitulation  of  Sedan  soon  came,  and 
with  it  the  revolution  of  the  4th  of  Septem- 
ber. On  the  5th  the  poet  re-entered  France. 
On  reaching  Landrecies,  the  first  scene  that 
met  his  eyes  was  one  of  rout  and  disorder. 
Soldiers,  faint  and  weary,  and  fugitives  more 
than  half  starved,  were  holding  out  their 
hands  for  a  morsel  of  bread.  In  the  pres- 
ence of  the  great  disaster,  whereby  the  whole 
French  army  seemed  vanquished  and  dis- 
persed, tears  rolled  down  his  cheeks,  and  his 
whole  frame  q*uivered  with  sobs.  He  bought 
up  all  the  bread  that  could  be  procured,  and 
distributed  it  among  the  famished  troops. 

His  companion  on  this  mournful  journey 
was  M.  Jules  Claretie,  a  man  of  good  family, 
and  a  writer  of  no  inconsiderable  renown. 
It  will  be  well  for  us  to  allow  him  to  tell  the 
story  in  his  own  touching  words.  He  writes : 

"On  Monday,  the  5th  of  September,  the 
day  after  the  fall  of  the  Empire,  Victor  Hugo, 
then  staying  in  the  Place  des  Barricades  in 
Brussels,  presented  himself  at  the  railway 
booking-office,  and,  with  an  emotion  in  his 
voice  that  he  in  vain  tried  to  suppress,  asked 
for  a  ticket  to  Paris. 

"I  see  him  still.  I  had  left  the  battle- 
field of  Sedan  and  gone  to  Brussels,  where  I 
had  spent  the  anxious  day  of  the  4th  in  fe- 
verish suspense,  rushing  alternately  to  the 
post  and  telegraph  offices.  In  the  evening 
the  news  arrived  that  the  Republic  had  been 
proclaimed  in  Paris.  Immediately  it  was 
arranged  that  Victor  Hugo  should  start  on 


the  following  day.  A  voluntary  exile  from 
France  since  the  amnesty,  he  had  remained 
faithful  to  his  vow,  twice  repeated,  first  in 
'Les  Chatiments,'  then  in  his  letter,  'When 
liberty  returns,  I  will  return.' 

"France  had  now  recovered  herself,  and 
it  was  no  longer  her  liberty  that  was  threat- 
ened, but  her  independence.  Victor  Hugo 
felt  himself  entitled  to  go  back  to  Paris  when 
Paris  was  besieged.  It  was  my  own  privi- 
lege to  accompany  him  on  his  journey,  every 
detail  of  which  has  fastened  itself  upon  rny 
memory.  The  story  of  that  day  has  become 
a  page  of  history. 

"Wearing  a  soft  felt  hat  and  carrying  a 
small  leather  travelling  -  bag  fastened  across 
his  shoulders  by  a  strap,  Victor  Hugo,  pale 
with  excitement,  looked  instinctively  at  his 
watch  as  he  pressed  forward  to  get  his  ticket. 
It  seemed  as  if  he  must  be  taking  note  of  the 
precise  moment  when  his  exile  was  to  come 
to  an  end. 

"  Truly  a  long  time  had  passed  (nineteen 
years  !)  since  the  day  when  he  had  been 
forced  to  leave  Paris,  which  was  over- 
whelmed by  his  genius,  and  to  surrender 
everything  that  seemed  to  make  up  his  life 
— his  home,  his  books,  his  pictures,  and  his 
furniture;  the  day  on  which  he  had  been 
torn  from  the  pages  he  was  writing,  and  of 
which  the  ink  was  not  yet  dry :  yes,  nineteen 
years  had  now  elapsed. 

"But  it  was  all  over!  The  time  had  come 
when  once  more  he  was  to  say,  'Here  is 
France!' 

'"A  ticket  for  Paris!'  he  exclaimed,  in  a 
tone  that  seemed  to  me  to  ring  like  the  note 
of  a  clarion. 

"On  the  platform  some  faithful  friends 
were  waiting  to  see  him  off.  One  of  these — 
the  good  Camille  Berru,  who  has  been  de- 
scribed by  Charles  Hugo  in  '  Les  Homines  de 
1'Exil' — was  overpowered  by  grief  because 
he  was  unable  to  accompany  a  man  he  loved 
so  earnestly. 

"  The  train  started.    Victor  Hugo  was 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


225 


seated  opposite  to  myself  and  M.  Antoine 
Prevost.  He  gazed  through  the  window, 
his  eye  fixed  steadily  on  the  horizon.  He 
was  manifestly  watching  for  the  moment 
when  the  frontier  should  be  crossed,  and 
once  again  his  eyes  should  feast  upon  the 
meadows,  the  trees,  the  soil,  the  sky,  of  his 
own  country.  I  shall  never  forget  the  ex- 
pression that  passed  over  his  features.  He 
was  now  sixty -eight.  His  head  wras  whit- 
ened by  his  years  of  exile,  but  the  glow  of 
animation  that  was  shed  over  his  counte- 
nance as  he  first  caught  sight  of  a  French 
soldier  can  never  be  obliterated  from  my 
recollection. 

"This  occurred  at  Landrecies.  Making 
good  their  retreat  from  Mezieres,  on  their 
way  to  Paris,  the  remnant  of  Vinoy's  corps, 
poor  harassed  creatures,  covered  with  dust 
and  discolored  with  powder,  pale  with  exer- 
tion and  discouragement,  were  lying  all  along 
the  road.  Close  behind  them  were  the  Uh- 
lans. There  was  no  alternative  for  them  but 
flight  if  they  would  escape  the  disaster  that 
had  befallen  the  army  at  Sedan.  Defeat  was 
written  in  their  faces,  demoralization  was  evi- 
dent in  their  attitude;  they  were  dejected 
and  dirty;  they  were  like  pebbles  driven 
along  by  a  hurricane.  But  what  of  that? 
Anyhow,  they  were  soldiers  of  France;  their 
uniform  proclaimed  their  nationality;  they 
wore  the  blue  tunic  and  the  red  trousers,  but, 
what  wras  of  infinitely  greater  consequence, 
they  were  carrying  their  colors  back  with 
them.  Their  defeat  did  not  prevent  them 
bringing  back  the  tricolor  safe  and  sound. 
Great  tears  rolled  from  Victor  Hugo's  eyes. 
He  leaned  from  the  carriage  window,  and, 
with  a  voice  thrilling  in  its  earnestness,  he 
kept  shouting,  '  Vive  la  France !  vive  1'armee ! 
vive  la  patrie!' 

' '  Exhausted  as  they  were  with  hunger  and 
fatigue,  the  bewildered  soldiers  looked  up. 
They  scarcely  comprehended  what  he  said, 
but  he  continued  his  shouting,  and  it  was  al- 
most like  an  order  of  quick-march  to  them 
all  when  they  made  out  that  they  were  being 
assured  that  they  had  done  their  duty,  and 
that  it  was  by  no  fault  of  theirs  that  they 
had  sustained  defeat. 

"And  so  the  train  went  on.  The  tears 
still  lost  themselves  in  Victor  Hugo's  snowy 
beard.  He  had  lived  in  the  proud  illusion 
that  France  was  invincible ;  he  was  a  soldier's 
son,  and  could  not  conceive  that  the  soldiers 
of  his  country  were  not  pledged  to  glory.  He 
had  ever  imagined  them  foremost  and  trium- 
15 


phant  in  the  fight;  but  now  his  hopes  were 
blighted,  his  anticipations  had  miscarried, 
and  he  could  be  heard  sighing,  '  Better,  per- 
haps, never  to  have  seen  France  again  than 
to  see  her  dismembered  and  divided,  and  re- 
duced to  what  she  was  in  the  days  of  Louis 
XIII.' 

"It  is  more  than  ten  years  since,  but  that 
hinders  me  not  from  still  seeing  those  tears  of 
the  poet  trickling  as  though  they  were  drops 
from  a  wound  in  the  depth  of  his  heart ! 

' '  And  may  I  not  mention  another  incident 
of  which  I  cannot  be  otherwise  than  proud? 
I  gave  him  his  first  meal  after  he  passed  the 
frontier  of  his  country  on  his  homeward 
way.     His  arrival  at  Tergnier  was  expected ; 
i  the  refreshment-room  was  crowded ;  the  com- 
\  minsaire,  with  a  bow,  told  him  that  he  need- 
\  ed  no  passport,  and  we  made  our  way  to  the 
buffet,  at  which  there  was  little  enough  to  be 
i  had.     Then  it  was  that  I  solicited  the  honor 
of  presenting  him  with  the  first  meal  of 
which  he  partook  after  this  long  estrange- 
ment from   his  country;   he  accepted  my 
offer,  and  we  made  a  hasty  repast  off  new 
bread,  cheese,  and  wine.     During  the  meal, 
I  saw  him  slip  into  his  pocket  a  fragment  of 
the  bread  which  he  had  been  eating  as  his 
earliest  refreshment  in  his  newly  recovered 
country. 

"  '  I  have  that  piece  of  bread  still,'  he  has 
more  than  once  said  to  me,  when  speaking  of 
that  frugal  entertainment ;  '  Madame  Drouet 
takes  care  of  it  for  me. ' 

"Except  that  morsel  of  bread,  I  think  he 
took  nothing  more  that  day;  sorrow  had 
parched  his  throat. 

"After  we  re-entered  the  train,  the  shades 
of  evening  began  to  gather,  and  for  the  rest 
of  the  journey  Victor  Hugo  was  thoughtful 
and  silent.  He  broke  the  stillness  by  saying, 
'  I  should  like  to  enter  our  imperilled  city  on 
foot  and  alone,  like  an  unknown  traveller. ' 

' '  Charles  Hugo  was  travelling  with  us, 
but  at  the  Northern  Railway -station  Fran- 
cois Hugo,  Vacquerie,  and  Paul  Meurice  all 
rushed  forward  calling  out,  'Vive  Victor 
Hugo !' 

"  'Gently,  gently!'  cried  a  surgeon-major; 
'we  have  some  wounded  men  here,'  and  he 
pointed  to  some  ambulance  wagons  that 
were  smeared  with  blood.  At  a  sign  from 
Victor  Hugo,  his  friends  restrained  their 
vociferations,  but  outside  the  station  an 
enormous  crowd  was  awaiting  him,  and  no 
sooner  was  he  recognized  than  he  was 
:  triumphantly  carried  off. 


226 


VICTOR  IIUGO  AND  1118   TIME. 


"  Through  the  midst  of  the  vast  populace 
I  followed  with  my  gaze.  I  looked  with  ad- 
miration on  that  man  now  advancing  in 
years,  but  faithful  still  in  vindicating  right, 
and  never  now  do  I  behold  him  greeted  with 
the  salutations  of  a  grateful  people  without 
recalling  the  scene  of  that  memorable  night 
when,  with  weeping  eye,  he  returned  to  see 
his  country  as  she  lay  soiled  and  dishonored, 
and  well-nigh  dead! 

"  With  reference  to  that  day,  Victor  Hugo 
has  written  to  me,  saying,  '  You  are  still 
young,  but  nevertheless  to  me  you  are  an  old 
friend;  we  have  mutual  recollections  of  my 
return  to  France.' " 

To  these  pathetic  reminiscences  of  Claretie 
we  may  add  a  few  lines  from  Alphonse  Dau- 
det,  who  has  chronicled  the  same  event : 

"He  arrived  just  as  the  circle  of  invest- 
ment was  closing  in  around  the  city;  he 
came  by  the  last  train,  bringing  with  him 
the  last  breath  of  the  air  of  freedom.  He 
had  come  to  be  a  guardian  of  Paris;  and 
what  an  ovation  was  that  which  he  received 
outside  the  station  from  those  tumultuous 
throngs,  already  revolutionized,  who  were 
prepared  to  do  great  things,  and  were  infi- 
nitely more  rejoiced  at  the  liberty  they  had 
regained  than  terrified  by  the  cannon  that 
were  thundering  against  their  ramparts! 
Never  can  we  forget  the  spectacle  as  the  car- 
riage passed  along  the  Rue  Lafayette,  Victor 
Hugo  standing  up,  and  being  literally  borne 
along  by  the  teeming  multitudes." 

It  was  ten  o'clock  at  night  when  the  train 
arrived.  The  poet  had  chosen  to  reach  his 
destination  at  this  late  hour,  expecting  that 
he  should  make  his  entry  into  the  capital  in 
quiet  and  unobserved  privacy ;  but  the 
crowds  that  filled  the  neighborhood  of  the 
station  and  the  adjacent  streets  had  waited 
for  hours  to  give  their  welcome  to  the  great 
citizen  who  had  been  so  long  the  champion 
of  their  rights  and  liberty. 

All  Paris  was  eager  not  only  to  see  but  to 
hear  Victor  Hugo,  who,  in  acknowledgment 
of  his  enthusiastic  reception,  delivered  a 
short  speech. 

"  Words  fail  me,"  he  began,  in  a  trembling 
voice,  "and  I  am  incapable  of  saying  how 
much  I  am  moved  by  the  welcome  which 
the  generous  people  of  Paris  has  pleased  to 
extend  me.  Citizens,  I  have  always  said 
that  when  a  Republic  should  return,  I  would 
return  too.  And  here  I  am! 

"There  are  two  things  that  call  me  now. 
The  first  is  the  Republic;  the  other  is  danger. 


I  am  here  to  do  my  duty;  aad  my  duty  is  the 
same  as  yours.  Upon  every  one  of  us  there 
now  rests  the  same  obligation.  We  must 
defend  Paris  and  save  it! 

' '  I  thank  you  for  your  acclamations. 
But  I  attribute  them  all  to  your  sense  of  the 
anguish  that  is  rending  all  hearts,  and  to  the 
peril  that  is  threatening  our  laud. 

"  I  have  but  one  thing  to  demand  of  you. 
I  invite  you  to  union.  By  union  you  will 
conquer.  Subdue  all  ill-will.  Check  all  re- 
sentment. Be  united,  and  you  shall  be  in- 
vincible. Rally  round  the  Republic.  Hold 
fast,  brother  to  brother.  Victory  is  in  our 
own  keeping.  Fraternity  is  the  saviour  of 
liberty!" 

Then,  cheered  continually  along  the  whole 
route,  he  was  conducted  to  No.  5  Avenue 
Frochot,  the  residence  of  his  friend  Paul 
Meurice,  where  he  was  to  take  up  his  abode. 
Here  he  again  said  a  few  words  to  the  peo- 
ple, telling  them  that  in  that  single  hour 
they  had  compensated  him  for  all  his  nine- 
teen years  of  exile. 

Throughout  the  siege  the  poet  remained 
with  Paul  Meurice  in  an  elegant  suite  of 
rooms  on  the  ground-floor  of  a  house  that  was 
enclosed  by  trees.  At  that  time  Madame 
Paul  Meurice  "was  alive. 

No  home  could  be  kinder  than  that  in 
which  the  poet  was  received.  He  needed 
warm  and  faithful  friends.  He  had  never 
anticipated  that  it  would  be  his  fate  to  come 
back  and  find  that  the  imperial  crime  had 
been  thus  chastised  by  the  invasion  of  a  for- 
eign foe. 

To  that  country  which  he  had  ever  loved 
so  ardently,  if  he  now  brought  nothing  else, 
he  brought  noble  advice.  He  came  back  to 
tell  her  how  to  resist  and  how  to  fight,  and 
he  was  quite  prepared  to  take  his  own  share 
in  her  sufferings,  her  sorrows,  and  her  strug- 
gles. 

Enough  for  him  to  know  that  Paris  was 
besieged,  and  that  accordingly  Paris  was 
the  proper  place  for  him.  In  spite  of  the 
giant  army  of  Prussia,  France  had  regained 
her  liberty,  and  he  was  not  going  to  let 
France  die  now,  except  he  were  to  die  with 
her.  His  children  and  grandchildren  were 
with  him ;  they  had  scorned  the  Empire,  but 
the  sorrow  of  the  land  should  now  win  their 
love.  The  young  men  of  the  second  Empire 
might,  if  they  pleased,  escape  beyond  the 
frontier,  and  get  out  of  the  reach  of  the 
Prussian  bombs;  his  own  place  was  at  the 
post  of  danger;  his  own  breast  should  lie 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


227 


open  as  a  target  for  the  cannon  that  were 
levelled  against  the  city  of  the  world  ! 

For  some  days  after  his  return  to  France, 
the  German  army  kept  advancing  by  forced 
marches  to  invest  the  capital.  It  occurred 
to  him  to  ask  himself  whether  there  was  not 
yet  time  to  interpose  his  voice  between  two 


was  circulated  in  both  the  French  and  Ger- 
man newspapers. 

'  •  Germans  !"  he  wrote,  ' '  he  who  now  ad- 
dresses you  speaks  as  a  friend.  It  is  but 
three  years  ago,  at  the  time  of  the  Exhibition 
of  1867,  that  I  sent  you  my  good  wishes, 
and  bade  you  welcome  to  your  city.  Yes,  I 


MADAME   PAUL   MEUKICE. 


contending  nations,  of  which  the  victorious 
kept  saying  to  the  vanquished,  "  We  are  not 
making  war  against  you,  but  only  against 
your  emperor. "  Ought  it  not  now  to  be  that 
as  the  emperor  had  been  set  aside  the  strife 
should  be  brought  to  a  close  ?  And,  under 


say  your  city;  for  Paris  belongs  not  to  us 
alone ;  it  is  yours  as  well  as  ours.  You  have, 
indeed,  your  capitals  —  Berlin,  Dresden,  Vi- 
enna, Munich,  and  Stuttgart;  but  Paris  is 
your  centre,  and  it  is  in  Paris  that  men  learn 
to  live:  it  is  the  city  of  cities;  it  is  the  city 


this  conviction,  lie  issued  an  appeal,  which  j  of  men.     There  has  been  an  Athens,  there 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


has  been  a  Rome ;  now  there  is  a  Paris,  and 
Paris  is  a  synonym  for  open  hospitality. 

"  And  now  you  will  come  back  to  us  again, 
but  you  come  back  as  enemies!  Whence 
this  dire  misunderstanding?  Why  this  in- 
vasion? What  mean  these  savage  efforts? 
\Vhut  have  we  done? 

' '  This  war  does  not  proceed  from  us.  It 
was  the  Empire  that  willed  the  war;  it  was 
the  Empire  that  prosecuted  it.  But  now  the 
Empire  is  dead,  and  a  good  thing  too!  We 
have  nothing  to  do  with  its  corpse;  it  is  all. 
the  past;  we  are  the  future.  The  Empire 
was  hatred,  we  are  sympathy;  that  was  trea- 
son, we  are  loyalty.  The  Empire  was  Ca- 
pua, nay,  it  was  Gomorrah;  we  are  France. 
Our  motto  is  '  Liberty,  Equality,  Fraternity;' 
on  our  banner  we  inscribe  '  The  United  States 
of  Europe.'  Whence,  then,  this  onslaught? 

' '  Pause  a  while  before  you  present  to  the 
world  the  spectacle  of  Germans  becoming 
Vandals,  and  of  barbarism  decapitating  civil- 
ization. Victory  will  not  be  for  your  honor. 

"Persist,  Germans,  if  you  will;  but  re- 
member you  are  warned.  Paris  will  defend 
herself.  I  am  an  old  man  now;  I  shall  not 
bear  arms,  but  I  am  satisfied  to  be  on  the 
side  of  the  people  who  are  slain;  I  pity  you 
who  are  on  the  side  of  the  rulers  who  slay." 

These  were  words  of  peace,  but  the  Ger- 
man press  only  replied  with  cries  of  wrath 
and  indignation.  The  manifesto  was  torn 
down  and  destroyed  by  the  Prussian  gen- 
erals, and  one  of  the  newspapers  declared 
that  the  proper  place  for  the  author  was  on 
the  gibbet,  "  Hangt  den  Dichter  an  den  Mast 
auf . " 

Meanwhile  the  enemy  continued  to  ad- 
vance. The  last  resource  for  Paris  seemed 
to  be  to  make  a  general  levy,  and  to  issue  a 
peremptory  call  to  arms.  Victor  Hugo  raised 
the  war-cry  : 

"Let  every  commune  arouse  itself!  let 
every  field  take  fire!  let  every  forest  be  filled 
with  a  voice  of  thunder!  Tocsin!  tocsin! 
Let  every  house  produce  a  soldier!  let  the 
faubourg  become  a  regiment,  the  city  be- 
come an  army!  The  Prussians  may  be 
800,000  strong,  but  you  are  forty  millions! 
Stand  up  and  blow  upon  them!  Lille, 
Nantes,  Tours,  Bourges,  Orleans,  Dijon, 
Toulouse,  Bayonne,  gird  up  your  loins!  Ly- 
ons, take  your  rifles!  Rouen,  draw  your 
sword!  Marseilles,  sing  your  hymn!  Cit- 
ies, cities,  cities,  make  forests  of  pikes,  mass 
together  your  bayonets,  horse  your  cannon ! 
Villages,  bring  out  your  pitchforks  ! 


"  What  do  you  say?  You  have  no  pow- 
der? All  a  mistake;  you  have  whai  you 
MI  ril.  The  Swiss  peasants  had  but  their 
hatchets;  the  Polish  peasants  had  but  their 
scythes;  the  Breton  peasants  had  but  their 
sticks;  and  yet  they  carried  all  before  them. 
In  a  true  cause  evt T\ Mli'mir  helps.  We  are 
at  home.  The  season  will  be  ours;  the 
north  wind  will  be  ours;  the  rain  will  be 
ours.  War  or  disgrace  !  Where  there's  a 
will,  there's  a  way!  A  bad  gun  is  a  good 
weapon  if  it  be  used  with  a  brave  heart ;  the 
stump  of  an  old  sword  can  do  fine  work  if  it 
be  wielded  by  a  valiant  hand.  The  Spanish 
peasants  did  for  Napoleon,  let  the  peasants 
find  a  weapon  now!  Roll  together  your 
rocks,  tear  up  your  paving  -  stones,  convert 
your  ploughshares  into  axes,  torment  the  in- 
vaders with  the  pebbles  from  the  ground; 
the  stones  you  fling  in  their  faces  shall  be 
the  soil  of  France  itself!" 

This  ringing  battle-cry  was  issued  on  the 
17th  of  September.  Its  author  was  urged  to 
go  and  promulgate  it  throughout  the  prov- 
inces, but  he  felt  pledged  to  share  the  fate  of 
Paris,  and  would  not  quit  his  post.  On  the 
whole  the  people  acted  very  heroically,  al- 
though in  October  some  signs  of  disaffection 
appeared,  and  there  was  an  attempt  at  a 
communist  insurrection  which  was  fortu- 
nately quelled. 

Having  thus  first  raised  his  voice  in  favor 
of  peace  by  deprecating  the  advance  of  the 
Prussians,  and  having  next  encouraged  a 
war  that  in  his  eyes  was  sanctified,  inas- 
much as  so  far  from  being  an  aggression  it 
had  no  other  object  than  to  repel  invasion, 
the  poet  felt  himself  constrained  to  address 
the  people  of  Paris,  and  to  urge  upon  them 
the  imperative  duty  of  concord. 

"What  you  now  owe  to  duty  is  to  forget 
yourself,"  he  said  to  every  individual  among 
them.  He  added: 

"There  must  now  be  union.  Without 
unity  you  cannot  prevail.  Your  resent- 
ments, your  grievances,  your  animosities, 
must  all  be  cast  to  the  winds,  and  disappear 
in  presence  of  the  cannon's  roar.  We  must 
hold  together  so  that  we  may  fight  together. 
Our  merits  must  be  deemed  equal.  Have 
any  been  outlaws?  I  know  nothing  about 
them.  Have  any  been  exiled  ?  It  is  not  for 
me  to  inquire.  It  is  no  tune  now  for  per- 
sonalities; it  is  no  time  now  for  ambitions 
or  reminiscences.  The  one  common  thought 
in  which  everything  must  now  be  merged 
must  be  the  commonwealth." 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


229 


Wise  and  patriotic  as  these  counsels  were, 
they  were  not  universally  received  as  they 
deserved;  but  the  author  of  them  remained 
steadfast  in  setting  a  bright  example  of  cour- 
age and  of  equanimity. 

In  October  a  Parisian  edition  of  "Les 
Chatiments"  appeared;  and  the  book  thus 
became  associated  with  the  siege,  playing  its 
part  during  that  terrible  time.  From  the  first 
issue,  consisting  of  five  thousand  copies,  the 
author  received  a  profit  of  five  hundred  francs, 
which  he  at  once  contributed  to  the  fund 
that  had  been  started  to  procure  cannon. 

Very  shortly  after  this  the  Literary  Society 
proposed  that  some  of  the  leading  artistes  of 
the  city  should  combine  to  give  a  recitation 
of  pieces  taken  from  the  book  which,  once 
proscribed,  had  now,  by  the  re-establishment 
of  the  Republic,  become  a  lawful  publica- 
tion. With  the  proceeds  of  the  performance 
they  begged  their  president  to  have  a  cannon 
cast  for  the  national  defence,  and  to  allow  it 
to  be  called  by  his  own  name.  Victor  Hugo 
replied  that  he  was  proud  to  accept  their 
noble  offer,  but  that  he  could  not  permit  the 
gun  to  be  named  after  himself,  suggesting  at 
the  same  time  that  it  should  be  called  "the 
ChSteaudun, "  after  the  brave  little  town  that, 
together  with  Strasburg,  had  attracted  the 
admiration  of  Europe. 

The  recitation  of  "Les  Chatiments"  took 
place  at  the  theatre  of  the  Porte-Saint-Martin 
on  the  5th  of  November.  M.  Jules  Claretie 
made  a  noble  speech  on  behalf  of  the  so- 
ciety, recounting  the  history  of  the  poet's 
exile,  and  pointing  out  how  the  sad  predic- 
tions of  his  verses  had  all  been  fulfilled.  It 
was  with  the  nephew  just  as  it  had  been 
with  the  uncle,  that  the  Empire  which  pro- 
fessed that  "T  Empire  Jest  la  paiv  "  had  end- 
ed in  invasion. 

Recited  as  they  were  by  the  most  gifted 
actors  of  the  time,  by  Frederic  Lemaitre, 
Coquelin,  Marie  Laurent,  Lafontaine,  and 
Berton,  and  accompanied  by  Pasdeloup's  or- 
chestra, the  passages  from  ' '  Les  Chatiments  " 
were  rendered  with  a  skill  and  received  with 
an  enthusiasm  which  none  but  an  eye  -  wit- 
ness could  conceive. 

The  proceeds  of  the  performance  were 
7500  francs;  and  the  sensation  was  so  great 
that  the  besieged  population  begged  for  a 
repetition  of  the  entertainment,  of  which  the 
success  was  still  more  complete.  A  third 
performance  was  given  on  the  17th  of  Novem- 
ber, but  on  this  occasion  all  the  admittances 
were,  by  the  poet's  wish,  perfectly  free.  M. 


Tony  Revillon  delivered  an  address  upon 
the  work;  between  the  pieces  the  actresses 
went  round  and  made  a  collection  in  Prussian 
helmets  that  they  handed  about,  and  at  the 
end  a  gilt  laurel-wreath  was  thrown  upon  the 
stage,  bearing  the  inscription, 

"FOB  OUR  POET, 
Who  has  labored  to  give  peace  of  miiid  to  the  poor." 

Altogether  the  amount  thus  realized  ex- 
ceeded 10,000  francs,  and  the  Literary  So- 
ciety resolved  that  two  cannon  should  be 
cast,  one  to  be  inscribed  with  the  word 
"Chatiments,"  and  the  other  with  Victor 
Hugo's  name.  Both  were  also  to  bear  the 
words  ' '  Societe  des  Gens  des  Lettres. "  M. 
Dorian,  the  Minister  of  Public  Works,  ac- 
quiesced in  the  scheme.  The  guns  cost 
about  7000  francs,  and  the  rest  of  the  money 
was  applied  to  the  relief  of  literary  men  who 
were  thrown  into  distress  by  the  war. 

A  further  sum  of  6000  francs,  the  proceeds 
of  a  performance  of  certain  extracts  from  Vic- 
tor Hugo's  principal  plays  at  the  Porte-Saint- 
Martin,  was  appropriated  to  the  ambulances. 

But  independently  of  these  performances 
' '  Les  Chatiments, "  as  well  as  Victor  Hugo's 
other  works,  became  a  kind  of  open  proper- 
ty to  the  theatres,  and  by  the  author's  per- 
mission were  left  at  their  disposal  until  Jan- 
uary in  the  following  year,  when  it  was 
found  impossible  either  to  light  or  to  warm 
the  houses.  It  was  a  gracious  act  on  the 
part  of  Victor  Hugo,  and  it  was  owing  to 
his  generosity  that  several  companies  of  in- 
fantry were  kept  provided  with  their  neces- 
sary equipments. 

Gambetta,  not  many  days  before  he  made 
his  venturous  ascent  in  the  balloon,  called 
upon  the  poet,  desirous  to  acknowledge  the 
services  which  he  had  endeavored  to  render 
to  the  Republic  and  to  his  country. 

"For  the  public  good,"  said  Victor  Hugo, 
"make  use  of  me  in  any  way  you  can.  Dis- 
tribute me  as  you  would  dispense  water.  My 
books  are  even  as  myself;  they  are  all  the 
property  of  France.  With  them,  with  me, 
do  just  as  you  think  best." 

There  was  scarcely  any  limitation  to  the 
range  of  the  benefits  which  the  poet  by 
means  of  his  works  was  now  conferring. 
The  stage  -  representations  Avere  multiplied 
in  every  direction.  The  needy  and  the  sick, 
the  widows  and  the  orphans,  none  were  for- 
gotten; though  Victor  Hugo  himself,  who 
shunned  public  ovations,  was  never  present 
at  any  of  the  performances. 


230 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


To  the  very  last  the  poet  maintained  his 
courage  and  kept  up  his  hope.  Alarmed 
though  he  might  be,  he  was  ever  anxious  to 
allay  alarm  in  others,  and  in  the  severest 
hours  of  trial  hi.s  cheerful  demeanor  never 
forsook  him.  From  his  pleasant  quarters  in 
Paul  Meurice's  house  in  the  Avenue  Froehot 
he  made  his  way  every  morning  to  the  Pa- 
vilion dc  Rohan,  near  the  Rue  de  1'Eehelle, 
where  his  family  had  found  a  retreat,  and 
there  he  welcomed  not  only  his  personal 
friends,  but  many  of  the  members  of  the 
Committee  for  National  Defence.  For  the 
sake  of  example,  they  all  put  themselves  un- 
der strict  rule  of  rations,  determining  to  par- 
take of  no  more  food  than  what  was  abso- 
lutely necessary. 

To  any  of  his  colleagues  whom  Victor 
Hugo  chanced  to  meet,  he  would  say, 

' '  Come  and  dine  with  me ;  I  can  give  you 
a  spread." 

Of  what  the  "spread"  consisted,  it  may 
easily  be  imagined.  There  was  hardly  an 
animal  of  any  kind  that  was  not  being  util- 
ized for  food :  horses,  dogs,  cats,  and  rats 
finding  their  way  to  table,  and  helping,  as  it 
was  jocosely  said,  to  make  everybody's  stom- 
ach a  sort  of  Noah's  Ark.  But  the  Amphit- 
ryon kept  up  a  good  heart,  laughed  over  his 
strange  diet,  seasoning  the  unsavory  viands 
with  a  bon-mot,  and  making  up  for  any  de- 
ficiency of  food  by  a  store  of  good  anecdotes. 
His  menu  furnished  him  continually  with  the 
theme  for  many  amusing  couplets  that  have 
been  preserved  by  Madame  Drouet,  although 
the  author  has  naturally  considered  them  too 
trivial  to  allow  them  to  be  published.  Horse- 
flesh was  usually  the  material  of  the  meals; 
and  on  one  occasion,  having  partaken  of  a  slice 
of  some  half -starved  old  hack  that  proved 
by  no  means  easy  of  digestion,  he  wrote : 
"  My  dinner  for  digestion  far  too  heavy  seems ; 

Horse  in  the  stomach  gives  saddle  in  the  dreams." 

Nor  was  his  jest  always  in  verse.  One  even- 
ing, after  Emmanuel  Arago  had  been  dining 
with  him,  he  put  on  a  very  serious  look  and 
said  to  his  guest, 

"My  dear  friend,  you  know  my  opinion  on 
capital  punishment." 

"  Certainly,"  replied  the  statesman,  assum- 
ing a  very  stern  expression. 

"I  have  to  solicit  your  pardon  for  an  indi- 
vidual who  has  been  condemned  to  death." 

"Oh,  impossible,  impossible!  I  do  not 
know  to  whom  you  refer,  but  in  critical  times 
like  these  it  is  absolutely  necessary  for  the 
sentence  of  the  law  to  be  strictly  carried  out." 


"  But  permit  me — "  interposed  the  poet. 

"Impossible!"  repeated  M.  Arago;  "I  re- 
gret extremely  that  I  cannot  grant  your  re- 
quest." 

"Allow  me  to  explain.  The  poor  con- 
demned mortal  for  whom  I  would  plead  is 
our  dear  friend  Theophile  Gautier's  horse." 

Amid  general  laughter  the  favor  was  grant- 
ed, and  the  poor  old  animal  was  saved,  at 
least  for  a  time,  from  going  to  the  shambles. 

In  M.  Rivet's  volume  of  anecdotes  entitled 
"  Victor  Hugo  chez  lui,"  it  is  mentioned  that 
towards  the  end  of  the  winter,  when  the  dearth 
began  to  be  most  severely  felt,  the  idea  began 
to  be  discussed  of  eating  human  flesh. 

"Oh,  of  course,"  said  Victor  Hugo,  "I 
should  not  object  to  be  the  victim  to  appease 
the  hunger  of  my  fellow -citizens,"  and  he 
added  the  impromptu : 

"Not  my  ashes  to  leave  to  my  country  I  mean, 
But  myself,  my  own  self,  my  very  beefsteak ! 
And,  ladies,  you'll  need  but  a.  morsel  to  take 
To  lenrn  what  a  tender  old  creature  I've  been !" 

The  light-heartedness  so  peculiar  to  French- 
men did  much  to  enable  them  to  endure  their 
hard  privations,  and  it  was  with  a  smile  on 
their  countenances  that  they  swallowed  the 
bread  of  which  M.  Magnin  has  never  divulged 
the  ingredients. 

Every  evening  Victor  Hugo,  with  sorrow 
at  his  heart,  returned  to  his  quarters,  whence 
again  during  the  night  he  would  often  go 
out  and  take  long  walks  through  the  be- 
leaguered city,  composing,  according  to  his 
wont,  superb  verses,  many  of  which  were  ul- 
timately to  appear  in  "L'Aniiee  Terrible." 

The  sight  of  Paris  in  arms  filled  him  with 
admiration.  He  would  walk  towards  the 
ramparts  where  shells  were  falling,  and,  pur- 
suing his  meditations  in  the  gloom,  would  be 
stopped  from  time  to  time  by  the  sentinels, 
to  whom  he  always  responded  with  the  cry 
"  Vive  la  Republique!" 

In  reference  to  this  terrible  time  he  has  of- 
ten said : 

"Never  did  city  exhibit  such  fortitude. 
Not  a  soul  gave  way  to  despair,  and  courage 
increased  in  proportion  as  misery  grew  deeper. 
Not  a  crime  was  committed.  Paris  earned 
the  admiration  of  the  world.  Her  struggle 
was  noble  and  she  would  not  give  in.  Her 
women  were  as  brave  as  her  men.  Surren- 
dered and  betrayed  she  was;  but  she  was  not 
conquered." 

And  the  poet's  voice  ever  trembles  as  he 
recounts  the  circumstances  of  that  unde- 
served but  not  inglorious  defeat. 


"V. 


PEBFORMANCE   AT   THE   THEATRE   FRAN(JAI8. 

[Sketeh  by  Andrieitx.] 


232 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  UIS   TIME. 


CHAPTER   XXXI. 

Elections  for  the  National  Assembly.  —  Arrival  at  Bordeaux — Garibaldi. —  Victor  Hugo's  Speech.  — The 
Representatives  of  Alsace  and  Lorraine.— Stormy  Sittings. —Victor  Hugo's  Resignation.  —  Death  of 
Charles  Hugo.— His  Funeral. — The  Poet  in  Brussels.— Request  of  M.  Xnvier  de  Montdpin. 


ALTHOUGH  he  had  refused  to  make  any 
canvass,  Victor  Hugo  obtained  more  than 
4000  votes  in  the  fifteenth  arrondissement  in 
the  municipal  election  in  Paris  on  the  5th  of 
November,  1870;  while  at  the  general  elec- 
tion of  the  8th  of  February,  1871,  that  took 
place  immediately  after  the  signing  of  the 
armistice,  he  was  chosen  as  representative  for 
the  department  of  the  Seine,  being  second 
out  of  forty -three  candidates  with  214,169 
votes. 

The  Assembly  at  first  sat  at  Bordeaux, 
where  he  arrived  on  the  14th  of  February, 
just  two  days  after  Garibaldi  had  left,  On 
the  following  day,  at  the  conclusion  of  the 
first  sitting,  he  was  urged  to  address  the  peo- 
ple from  a  balcony  overlooking  the  Grande 
Place.  This  he  declined  to  do,  saying  that 
at  so  grave  a  crisis  prudence  was  the  better 
part  of  devotion.  He  thought  it  right  to 
communicate  with  the  people  only  through 
the  Assembly,  and  held  that  it  was  from  the 
tribune  that  he  ought  to  make  his  choice  be- 
tween a  desperate  war  and  a  still  more  des- 
perate peace  —  between  a  despair  coupled 
with  glory  and  a  despair  linked  with  shame. 

As  the  representative  of  Paris  he  sat  in  the 
ranks  of  the  extreme  Left.  M.  Grevy  was 
the  President  of  the  Assembly.  The  first 
time  that  Victor  Hugo  spoke  was  on  the  1st 
of  March,  when  he  delivered  an  energetic 
protest  against  the  proposed  preliminaries 
for  peace.  He  said  that  Paris  during  her 
protracted  struggle  had  been  the  admiration 
of  the  world;  he  declared  that  during  five 
months  of  the  Republic  she  had  gained  more 
honor  than  she  had  lost  during  nineteen 
years  of  the  Empire ;  he  professed  that, 
though  she  was  mutilated  herself,  she  would 
never  be  a  participator  in  the  mutilation  of 
France ;  and  he  maintained  that  if  Alsace 
and  Lorraine  still  wished  to  be  French,  it 
was  good  and  equitable  that  they  should  re- 
main so. 

"In  Strasburg,"  he  explained,  "in  that 
glorious  city  that  has  now  been  overpowered 


by  the  Prussian  artillery,  there  are  two  stat- 
ues, one  of  Gutenberg,  the  other  of  Kl<-l>< T; 
a  voice  within  us  bids  us  record  our  vow  to 
Gutenberg  that  we  will  not  quench  the  flame 
of  civilization,  and  our  vow  to  Richer  iliai 
we  will  not  extinguish  the  light  of  the  Re- 
public." 

Boisterous  applause  rose  from  the  Left, 
and  he  concluded  his  speech  by  an  eloquent 
appeal  to  "the  universal  Republic"  and  to 
Fraternity,  which  he  asserted  was  his  "ven- 
geance, "  winding  up  by  pronouncing  in  favor 
of  continuing  war  as  the  only  means  of  at- 
taining an  enduring  peace. 

But  the  treaty  of  peace  was  ratified. 

The  representatives  of  Alsace  and  Lorraine 
forthwith  sent  in  their  resignation  to  the 
Assembly;  and  a  meeting  of  the  radical  Left 
was  held  on  Thursday,  the  12th  of  March,  at 
which  Victor  Hugo  announced  his  intention 
of  submitting  the  following  resolution  to  the 
Chamber: 

"That  the  representatives  of  Alsace  and 
Les  Vosges  retain  their  seats  indefinitely,  and 
that  at  every  fresh  election  they  shall  be 
deemed  duly  elected." 

In  bringing  forward  his  motion  from  the 
tribune,  he  declared  that  although  from  a 
German  point  of  view  Alsace  and  Lorraine 
might  be  dead,  from  that  of  the  Assembly 
they  were  yet  alive  and  in  full  vigor;  there- 
fore he  demanded  that  there  should  be  a  dis- 
tinct repudiation  of  the  treaty,  which,  for  his 
part,  he  ignored  entirely  as  having  no  valid- 
ity at  all,  inasmuch  as  it  had  been  extorted 
by  force. 

A  n:i in  he  spoke  to  no  effect.  His  words 
were  not  so  effectual  as  his  father's  sword. 
The  motion  was  rejected. 

After  the  integrity  of  France  had  been  thus 
disposed  of  by  the  ratification  of  the  peace 
treaty,  the  Assembly  proceeded  to  dispose  of 
Paris,  and  came  to  the  resolution  that  the 
Chamber  should  sit  at  Versailles.  Victor 
Hugo  made  a  vehement  protest  against  what 
he  called  the  decapitalization  of  the  capital; 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS  TIME. 


233 


but  once  again  the  reactionary  party  pre- 
vailed and  the  Assembly  went  against  him. 

A  few  days  after  this  a  report  was  made 
upon  the  election  of  Algiers,  where  Gari- 
baldi had  been  chosen  as  representative.  It 
was  proposed  that  the  election  should  be  de- 
clared null  and  void,  whereupon  Victor  Hugo 
raised  an  earnest  appeal.  He  said : 

"  France  has  passed  through  a  tremendous 
ordeal;  she  has  emerged  bleeding  and  van- 
quished. Of  all  the  powers  of  Europe,  not 


scribable  tumult  broke  out  in  the  Assembly ; 
there  was  no  insult  too  gross  to  be  aimed 
at  the  orator;  the  Vicomte  de  Lorgeril  rose 
and  declared  that  M.  Victor  Hugo  was  not 
speaking  French ;  and  one  deputy,  the  Abbe 

'  Jaffre,  who  had  been  returned  at  Morbihan, 
and  was  quite  inexperienced  in  parliamen- 

,  tary  forms,  entirely  misunderstood  the  cry 
of  "A  1'ordre,  a  1'ordre,"  that  was  being  raised 

|  by  the  furious  majority,  and  at  the  very  top 

!  of  his  voice  kept  shouting  "  A  mort,  a  mort." 


GARIBALDI. 


one  has  stirred  itself  to  help  the  country 
which  has  ever  been  ready  to  take  up  the 
cause  of  Europe.  Not  one  state,  not  one 
sovereign,  has  aroused  itself  on  our  behalf; 
nay,  with  a  single  exception,  not  one  man. 
But  one  man  there  has  been;  and  what  has 
he  had  wherewith  to  aid  us?  Nothing  but 
his  sword.  That  sword  of  his  had  already 
delivered  one  nation,  and  he  indulged  the 
hope  that  it  might  contribute  to  the  deliver- 
ance of  another.  And  so  he  came;  and  so 
in  our  support  he  fought!" 
At  the  delivery  of  these  words  an  inde- 


In  the  midst  of  the  tumult  Victor  Hugo 
made  himself  heard ;  he  said,  calmly : 

'r  Three  weeks  ago  you  declined  to  lis- 
ten to  Garibaldi ;  you  now  refuse  to  listen  to 
me.  Very  good.  I  send  in  my  resigna- 
tion." 

Satisfied  in  his  own  mind  that  he  ought 
not  to  retain  a  place  in  a  Chamber  that 
appeared  to  him  to  be  animated  by  a  spirit 
more  dangerous  than  the  worst  and  most 
odious  Chamber  that  had  gone  before  it,  he 
could  only  retire.  He  left  the  tribune,  and, 
taking  a  pen  from  the  hand  of  one  of  the 


234 


VICTOR   III'UO  ANU 


TIM  I-:. 


reporters,  he  wrote  ;i  line  signifying  hi 
nation,  and  handed  it  to  M.  Grevy.  Magnani- 
mous as  ever,  the  President  of  the  Assembly 
(now  President  of  Hie  Republic)  did  every- 
thing in  liis  power  to  induce  tlie  poet  to  re- 
consider his  resolution,  but  no  persuasion 
could  move  him;  and  after  twenty-four  hours' 
deliberation,  during  which  M.  Grevy  pleaded 
with  him  most  affectionately,  he  adhered  to 
his  resolve,  and  left  the  President  no  alterna- 
tive but  to  announce  that  the  Assembly  was 
t<>  lo-r  the  services  of  the  distinguished  repre- 
sentative of  Paris. 
Louis  Blanc  immediately  rose,  lie  beir- 


devoted  to  humanity,  and  of  humanity  you 
are  the  first  of  apostles." 

( )n  the  13th  of  March,  just  as  he  was  mak- 
ing his  arrangements  to  return  to  Paris,  Vic- 
tor Hugo  was  about  to  join  some  friends  at 
dinner  at  a  restaurant,  when  he  received  the 
tidings  of  the  sudden  death  of  his  son 
Charles,  who  had  been  seized  with  conges- 
tion of  the  brain  in  a  cab  as  he  was  re- 
turning from  an  entertainment  where  he 
had  been  taking  farewell  of  some  of  his 
friends. 

It  was  a  shock  as  trying  as  it  was  unex- 
pected. After  nineteen  years  of  banishment, 


C1IAK1.KS    Hi;<;OS    Ft'NKHAI.. 


ged  to  express  his  extreme  regret  that  a  man 
to  whom  France  was  under  so  great  an  obli- 
gation shquld  feel  himself  compelled  to  re- 
sign his  seat  in  that  Assembly;  it  was  adding 
another  drop  of  sorrow  to  the  cup  that  was 
already  over  full ;  he  grieved  that  a  voice  so 
powerful  should  be  hushed  just  at  an  emer- 
gency when  the  country  should  be  showing 
its  gratitude  to  all  its  benefactors.  He  was 
seconded  by  M.  Schoelcher. 
Garibaldi  himself  wrote  to  Victor  Hugo: 
"  It  needs  no  writing  to  show  that  we  are 
of  one  accord;  we  understand  each  other; 
the  deeds  that  you  have  done  and  the  affec- 
tion that  I  have  borne  for  you  make  a  bond 
of  union  between  us.  What  you  have  testi- 
fied for  me  at  Bordeaux  is  a  pledge  of  a  life 


after  the  loss  of  his  true  and  loving  wife,  and 
after  the  bitter  sufferings  of  the  recent  trou- 
bles of  war  and  siege,  the  exile  seemed  to 
feel  that  he  had  returned  to  France  to  min- 
gle a  father's  tears  with  those  which  he  had 
shed  as  a  patriot. 

In  deep  distress,  he  had  his  son's  body 
brought  to  Paris,  resolved  that  it  should  be 
interred  in  the  family  vault  at  Pere  La 
Chaise,  where  the  poet's  father,  mother,  and 
brother  Eugene  were  already  lying.  The 
funeral  took  place  on  the  18th,  Victor  Hugo 
himself,  his  surviving  son  Frangois,  Paul 
Meurice,  Auguste  Vacquerie,  Paul  Foucher, 
and  some  other  friends  following  the  hearse 
on  foot.  Without  entering  any  church,  the 
little  procession  went  direct  to  the  cemetery, 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS  TIME. 


235 


though,  as  the  reporter  to  Le  Rappd  has  re- 
lated, it  took  up  a  remarkable  contingent  on 
the  way.  In  the  Place  de  la  Bastille,  three 
of  the  National  Guard  recognized  Victor 
Hugo,  and,  immediately  taking  their  places 
beside  the  hearse,  marched  along  with  low- 
ered guns.  As  they  proceeded  a  number  of 
their  comrades  joined  them;  and  when  the 
cortege  arrived  at  the  burial  -  ground  it  in- 
cluded nearly  a  hundred  soldiers,  who  had 
voluntarily  formed  a  guard  of  honor.  Pa- 
trolling detachments  were  then  unusually 
numerous,  and  on  hearing  whose  funeral 
was  passing  the  men  lowered  their  arms, 
sounded  their  bugles,  and  beat  their  drums; 
.and  even  the  guards  on  the  barricades,  not 
in  the  direct  line  of  thoroughfare,  present- 
ed arms  by  way  of  salutation  to  the  chief 
mourner. 

At  the  grave  so  great  a  crowd  had  col- 
lected that  there  was  some  little  delay  before 
the  bier  could  reach  the  vault.  Two  funeral 
orations  were  delivered,  one  by  Auguste 
Vacquerie,  the  other  by  Louis  Mie. 

After  speaking  of  the  life  of  promise  that 
seemed  to  lie  open  before  the  son  of  their 
venerable  and  sorrowing  friend,  M.  Vacque- 
rie proceeded  to  eulogize  the  principle  of 
right  which  the  departed  had  learned  to  love 
from  his  father,  and  which  not  even  the 
grave  could  annihilate,  declaring  that  if  he 
co'iild  come  back  from  the  tomb  it  would  be 
only  to  commence  afresh  the  struggle  for 
truth  in  which  he  had  been  arrested  by  the 
hand  of  death. 

M.  Louis  Mie  spoke  on  behalf  of  the  pro- 
vincial press.  Charles  Hugo,  he  reminded 
those  who  stood  around  him,  had  entered 
the  battle  of  life  by  advocating  his  father's 
views  as  to  the  claims  of  humanity,  and  he 
concluded  by  saying  that  while  there  had 
been  many  sons  who  had  detracted  from 
their  father's  honor,  here  was  one  whose 
«very  action  served  to  contribute  something 
of  glory  to  a  reputation  to  which  already 
nothing  seemed  wanting. 

Notwithstanding  the  sympathy  which  was 
so  largely  shown  to  him,  Victor  Hugo  was 
much  overwhelmed  by  his  grief,  though  his 
ardent  love  for  humanity  inspired  him  with 
strength  to  overcome  it. 

A  few  days  after  his  son's  funeral  he 
started  for  Brussels,  where  he  had  to  go 
through  the  formalities  which  his  office  as 
executor  and  guardian  of  his  grandchildren 
entailed  upon  him.  But  his  absence  from 
Paris  did  not  make  him  cease  to  follow  with 


anxious  interest  the  struggle  that  was  going 
on  between  the  capital  and  Versailles.  Rais- 
ing his  protest  against  the  civil  war,  he 
wrote : 

"  Hold,  hold  your  bands  !  your  strife  a  bitter  harvest 

yields ; 
Why  spread  the  raging  flame  that  devastates  your 

fields? 

When  France  looks  face  to  face  on  France  as  foe, 
France  murders  all  her  honor,  fills  herself  with  woe ; 
Each  victory  sends  the  blight  of  mourning  through 

the  land 

When  fellow-citizens  in  blood-red  quarrel  stand  ; 
Each   cannon-shot  when  Frenchmen  Frenchmen 

strike, 
Is  charged  with  death  and  fratricide  and  shame 

alike!" 

And  when  he  witnessed  how  the  leaders  of 
the  Commune,  on  the  plea  of  retaliation, 
plunged  into  every  excess,  he  became  indig- 
nant, and  called  on  them  to  recollect  how 
nothing  ought  to  be  done  outside  the  line  of 
honesty  and  justice.  No  sooner  did  he  hear 
of  them  cannonading  the  Colonne  and  the 
Arc  de  Triomphe  than  his  indignation  waxed 
still  hotter,  and  he  issued  "Les  deux  Tro- 
phees,"  in  earnest  hope  that  he  might  suc- 
ceed in  staying  the  ruthless  hand  of  the  de- 
stroyers : 

"  Oh,  has  not  France  enough  of  slaughter  seen  ? 
Deluged  with  blood  enough  has  France  not  been  ? 

Had  it  been  Prussia's  voice  that  bade  you  know 
That  pillar  and  that  archway  down  must  go — 
'  That  brazen  column  stands  too  proud  on  high, 
That  stately  arch  too  much  offends  my  eye- 
Down  with  them  both  ! ' 
How  full  of  deadly  fury  you  had  turned ! 
With  what  disdain  you  had  her  bidding  spurned  ! 
With  one  accord  to  rescue  them  would  haste : 
Yet  now  by  your  own  deed  yon  lay  them  waste  !" 

Without  hesitation,  Victor  Hugo  con- 
demned the  Commune  with  the  utmost  vehe- 
mence of  his  nature.  He  wrote  to  Le  Rap- 
pel  that  the  city  of  science  could  not  be 
guided  by  ignorance,  the  city  of  light  could 
not  be  led  by  blindness.  Ignorance  generates 
want  of  principle;  blindness  tends  to  brutal- 
ity, and  there  was  nothing  less  than  brutality 
in  the  affair  of  the  hostages,  which  was  an 
abominable  device  of  a  few  desperate  mad- 
men. 

However,  when  the  bloody  days  of  May, 
1871,  were  passed,  and  the  insurrection  was 
quelled,  Victor  Hugo  retained  no  animosity 
against  the  men  whose  proceedings  he  had 
so  vehemently  denounced;  he  not  only  pro- 
tested against  the  decree  of  the  Belgian  gov- 
ernment, which  forbade  the  fugitives  from 
Paris  to  betake  themselves  to  the  country, 


236 


VICTOR  IIUOO  AND  HI8    TIME. 


but  he  opened  his  own  house  to  some  of 
them  as  an  asylum.  He  was  still  residing  in 
Brussels,  at  4  Rue  des  Barricades,  and  he 
maintained  that  hi<  conscience  impelled  him 
to  offer  this  retreat  to  those  that  needed  it, 
satisfied  that  he  was  only  acting  in  con- 
formity with  the  principles  that  had  ever 
guided  him.  Already  he  had  written,  years 
ago: 

"  Should  e'er  it  chance  to  me  to  see  my  direst  foe 
With  bolta  and  dungeon  threatened  and  by  wrong 

distressed, 

My  vengeful  anger  would  I  instantly  forego; 
Nay,  though  it  were  the  tyrant  who  myself  op- 
pressed, 

To  find  him  safe  asylum  should  be  all  my  care, 
Just  as  the  Christ  a  vile  Iscariot  might  spare." 

He  was  ready  to  proclaim  pardon  for  all ; 
he  would  forgive  the  misguided  who  had 
been  led  astray  by  the  terror  of  the  political 
situation;  he  would  forgive  the  Parisian 
workmen,  who,  failing  to  have  confidence  in 
M.  Thiers,  fancied  that  the  Republic  was  in 
peril ;  he  was  anxious  to  extend  protection  to 
the  defeated,  and  all  this  was  only  in  accord- 
ance with  what  he  had  himself  once  said, 
that  if  Napoleon  III.  were  in  such  a  strait 
that  he  had  to  beg  an  asylum,  he  would  give 
it  him,  and  not  a  hair  of  his  head  should  be 
hurt. 

To  little    purpose,  however,  did    Victor 


Hugo  raise  the  plea  for  mercy.  Two  in- 
stances may  be  quoted  to  illustrate  the  ve- 
hemence of  the  fury  of  those  who  were 
opposed  to  him.  One  of  these  is  some- 
what ludicrous,  the  other  verges  on  the  trag- 
ical. 

On  the  22d  of  June,  M.  Xavier  de  Monte- 
pin,  a  writer  of  feuittetom  as  unwholesome 
as  they  were  illiterate,  wrote  a  letter  to  the 
President  of  the  Society  of  Dramatic  Au- 
thors, in  which  he  submitted  that  the  society 
would  only  be  consulting  their  proper  dig- 
nity by  having  the  names  of  MM.  Felix  Pyat, 
Victor  Hugo,  Henri  Rochef  ort,  Paul  Meurice, 
and  all  others  who  in  any  way  made  a  com- 
promise with  the  Commune,  erased  from  the 
roll  of  their  members.  His  way  of  recom- 
mending his  proposal  was  droll  enough. 

"We  shall  thus,"  he  writes,  "be  hollow- 
ing out  an  abyss  between  such  men  and  our- 
selves." 

The  idea  of  M.  Xavier  de  Montepin  desir- 
ing to  "hollow  out  an  abyss"  between  him- 
self and  the  author  of  " Hernani "  and  "Ma- 
rion Delorme  "  was  a  fund  of  amusement  to 
the  society,  who  of  course  took  no  notice 
whatever  of  the  letter ;  but  the  incident 
ought  not  to  fail  of  being  registered. 

The  more  tragical  illustration  may  be  de- 
ferred to  another  chapter. 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS  TIME. 


237 


CHAPTER  XXXII. 

Victor  Hugo'8  Opinion  of  the  Commune.— The  Communists  in  Brussels.— The  Belgian  Chamber.— Attack 
upon  Victor  Hugo's  Quarters.— Expulsion  from  Belgium. — Protest  against  the  Action  of  the  Govern- 
ment.—  A  Visit  to  Thionville — Reminiscences  of  General  Hugo. — Little  Georges  and  the  Prussian 
General.— Return  to  France. 


ON  the  28th  of  April,  Victor  Hugo  wrote 
from  Brussels  to  Auguste  Vacquerie  and 
Paul  Meurice  on  the  subject  of  the  events 
that  were  then  transpiring  in  Paris.  With- 
out disputing  that  France  had  a  perfect  right 
to  declare  herself  a  commune  if  she  would, 
he  considered  that  she  was  bound  to  await  a 
fitting  opportunity. 

"But  why,"  he  asked — "why  break  out 
into  a  conflict  at  such  an  hour  as  this?  why 
rush  into  a  civil  war  whea  a  foreign  war  is 
scarcely  at  an  end?  How  unseemly  to  treat 
Prussia  to  the  spectacle  of  Frenchmen  fight- 
ing like  wild  beasts  in  a  circus,  and  that  cir- 
cus France  itself!" 

After  censuring  the  insurrection  as  the  re- 
sult of  an  ignorant  misunderstanding,  he  said 
that  though  he  had  been  almost  unconscious- 
ly a  man  of  revolutions  from  his  youth,  al- 
ways ready  to  accept  great  necessities,  yet 
it  had  ever  been  under  the  condition  that 
they  should  be  the  confirmation  of  principle, 
and  not  its  convulsion.  No  one  could  have 
spoken  with  more  prudence  and  modera- 
tion. 

Meanwhile  events  thickened;  the  fatal 
days  of  May  occurred,  and  many  of  the  van- 
quished Communists  sought  refuge  in  Bel- 
gium. 

The  Belgian  Minister  of  Foreign  Affairs, 
questioned  on  the  subject,  pledged  himself  to 
do  all  in  his  power  to  prevent  the  country 
from  being  invaded  by  the  Communists, 
whom  he  denounced  as  unworthy  of  the 
name  of  men,  and  such  as  ought  to  be  ar- 
raigned at  the  bar  of  civilized  nations.  To 
this  declaration,  Victor  Hugo  made  a  reply 
which  appeared  in  L'lndependance  of  the 
27th  of  May. 

While  accepting  in  large  measure  the  prin- 
ciples of  the  Commune,  he  totally  repudiated 
their  acts,  expressing  his  thorough  detesta- 
tion of  their  rule  of  hostages,  their  retalia- 
tions and  their  excesses ;  but  he  insisted  that, 
savage  as  they  had  been,  they  ought  not  to 


be  condemned  without  a  trial.  He  said  that 
although  Belgium  by  law  might  refuse  them 
an  asylum,  his  own  conscience  could  not  ap- 
prove that  law.  The  Church  of  the  Middle 
Ages  had  offered  sanctuary  even  to  parricides, 
and  such  sanctuary  the  fugitives  should  find 
at  his  home ;  it  was  his  privilege  to  open  his 
door  if  he  would  to  his  foe,  and  it  ought  to 
be  Belgium's  glory  to  be  a  place  of  refuge. 
England  did  not  surrender  the  refugees,  and 
why  should  Belgium  be  behindhand  in  mag- 
nanimity? 

This  brought  about  the  tragical  issue  to 
which  we  have  alluded. 

On  the  very  night  after  the  publication  of 
the  article,  he  was  about  to  retire  to  rest 
when  there  was  a  ringing  of  the  house-bell. 
Opening  his  window  on  the  first  floor,  he 
looked  out  and  inquired  who  was  there,  and 
receiving  the  answer  that  it  was  Dombrow- 
ski,  faithful  to  his  promise  that  he  would 
give  an  asylum  to  any  that  needed  it  he  was 
about  to  descend  to  unbar  the  outer  door, 
when  a  great  stone  struck  the  wall  close  by. 
Looking  round  again,  he  saw  a  group  of  men 
in  the  square,  and,  understanding  only  too 
well  what  they  wanted,  he  called  out  to  them 
that  they  were  a  set  of  ruffians,  and  hastily 
shut  his  window.  At  this  moment,  a  huge 
fragment  of  paving -stone  crashed  through 
the  window-pane  close  above  his  head  and 
fell  at  his^feet;  while  outside  the  shout  was 
raised,  ' '  A  bas  Victor  Hugo !  a  has  Jean 
Valjean !  A  mort  Victor  Hugo !  a  mort,  & 
mort!" 

The  outcry  brought  Charles  Hugo's  widow 
running  into  the  room  with  her  two  little 
children;  and  while  the  stones  kept  rattling 
through  the  window,  the  voices  were  dis- 
tinctly heard  crying  out,  "To  the  gallows! 
to  the  gallows!  we  will  smash  in  his  door!" 

As  the  noise  subsided,  the  startled  inmates, 
thinking  there  was  no  further  cause  for 
alarm,  went  back  to  their  rooms. 

But  half  an  hour  afterwards  the  assault 


238 


VICTOR  1IUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


was  resumed.  A  large  stone  fell  on  Victor 
Hugo's  bed.  At  the  risk  of  her  life,  Madame 
( 'hades  Hugo  clambered  over  the  roof  of  a 
conservatory,  the  glass  breaking  under  her 
feet,  and  reached  an  adjoining  house;  but, 
though  she  did  her  utmost  to  attract  atten- 
tion, she  could  get  no  answer. 

Once  again  the  tumult  ceased,  and  Victor 
Hugo  was  caressing  the  frightened  children 
and  carrying  them  back  to  their  chamber, 
when  another  stone  was  hurled  into  the  room 
and  grazed  the  little  girl's  head. 

The  assailants,  frustrated  in  their  attempt 
to  break  in  the  door,  next  began  to  scale  the 
house;  but  at  that  time  of  year  there  is  no 
long  duration  of  night,  and  two  workmen 
passed  by,  who,  seeing  the  commotion,  hur- 
ried off  to  inform  the  police,  upon  whose  ap- 
proach the  ruffians  made  off.  Close  at  hand 
a  heavy  beam  was  found,  which  no  doubt 
was  being  conveyed  to  the  place  with  the 
intention  of  battering  in  the  door. 

It  was  a  dastardly  assault.  So  far  from 
taking  any  measures  to  punish  it  forthwith, 
the  government  only  issued  an  order,  signed 
by  the  king  and  the  minister  of  justice,  to  the 
effect  that  Victor  Hugo  must  immediately 
quit  the  kingdom,  and  that,  under  the  penal- 
ties of  the  law  of  1865,  he  was  forbidden  to 
return. 

In  the  Chamber,  on  the  same  day,  the  min- 
ister declared  that  Victor  Hugo's  letter  must 
be  regarded  as  a  challenge,  an  outrage  upon 
public  morality,  and  an  open  defiance  of  the 
law ;  and  consequently  Victor  Hugo,  as  a  dis- 
turber of  the  public  peace,  must  be  ordered 
to  quit  the  country. 

In  vain  did  M.  Defuisseaux  protest;  in  vain 
did  he  allege  that  the  illustrious  author  of 
"  Les  Chatiments  "  was  entitled  to  their  sym- 
pathy ;  and  that,  so  far  from  being  disturbed 
by  him,  the  public  peace  had  been  interrupt- 
ed only  by  a  few  miscreants  who  were  lost 
to  all  sense  of  justice  or  of  honor.  No  one 
would  listen.  But  the  outrage,  neverthelev-. 
had  the  effect  of  making  the  government  re- 
flect, and  they  refrained  from  proceeding  to  J 
proscribe  every  Communist  indiscriminately ; 
and,  moreover,  they  took  measures  to  have  the 
agents  in  the  disturbance  of  the  27th  of  May 
brought  to  justice.  It  was  difficult,  of  course,  j 
so  long  after  date,  to  procure  much  conclu- 
sive evidence,  and  the  witnesses  were  few 
and  hard  to  gather;  there  was,  however,  little 
room  to  doubt  that  M.  Kervyn  de  Letten- 
hove,  the  son  of  the  Minister  of  the  Interior, 
had  been  one  of  the  ringleaders  in  the  dis- 


graceful disturbance,  and  he  was  fined  in  the 
nominal  sum  of  100  francs. 

1  >riven  from  Belgium, Victor  Hugo  made  a 
tour  through  Luxembourg,  going  first  to  Vi- 
anden,  where  the  news  of  his  arrival  soon 
spread.  At  this  place  one  of  the  prearln  rs 
from  the  pulpit  denounced  him  as  the  as- 
sassin of  the  Archbishop  of  Paris,  telling  his 
congregation  that  the  presence  among  them 
of  such  a  man  would  be  sure  to  bring  a  heavy 
visitation  upon  them.  The  sermon  had  a 
very  unexpected  effect.  A  musical  society, 
known  as  "La  Lyre,"  came  out  and  sere- 
naded the  poet  under  his  window,  whence  he 
thanked  them  with  considerable  emotion,  as 
he  had  lately  been  far  more  accustomed  to 
the  tumult  of  passionate  wrath  than  to  any 
exhibition  of  sympathy.  He  said  that  this 
was  the  fifth  time  that  he  had  visited  the 
country :  previously  he  had  come,  drawn  by 
admiration  of  their  wild  and  beautiful  scen- 
ery; now  he  had  been  driven  among  them 
by  a  cruel  blast,  but  their  kind  reception 
atoned  for  much  of  his  trouble.  He  next 
made  his  way  to  London,  where  he  remained 
some  time. 

Some  time  previously  he  had  made  a  tour 
through  the  East  of  France,  visiting  the 
scenes  of  the  recent  war,  and  taking  his 
grandchildren  with  him  to  show  them  the 
towns  that  had  been  bombarded  by  the  Prus- 
sian shells. 

Among  other  towns,  he  went  to  Thion- 
ville,  where,  in  1792,  Chateaubriand  had  been 
wounded,  and  where,  in  1814,  Goethe  had 
borne  his  part  as  an  assailant.  Here  it  was 
that  General  Hugo  had  made  his  haughty 
reply  when  summoned  to  surrender  to  the 
Baron  of  Hainault,  and  he  asked  to  be  shown 
the  house  where  his  father  had  resided  at  the 
time.  The  people  at  the  hotel  could  not  in- 
form him,  but  advised  him  to  apply  to  the 
may  or,  who  was  very  old  and  would  probably 
recollect.  On  acquainting  the  mayor  with 
his  name,  the  venerable  functionary  started 
to  his  feet  and  exclaimed,  ' '  Ah,  we  wanted 
General  Hugo,  and  Thionville  again  would 
have  scorned  to  surrender  to  the  Prussians!" 
The  whole  of  the  town  council,  on  being  in- 
formed that  General  Hugo's  son  was  among 
them,  rose  to  their  feet  and  testified  their  re- 
spect. 

It  Avas  sad  to  find  that  the  portrait  of  the 
old  soldier  had  not  escaped  the  ravages  of 
the  shells;  only  a  bit  of  the  frame  remained 
hanging  to  the  wall.  A  Prussian  sentinel 
marched  to  and  fro  outside  the  chamber. 


A  NIGHT  ATTACK  IN  BRUSSELS. 


240 


VICTOR  I1UQO  AND  Hlti   TIME. 


One  day,  as  the  poet,  while  strolling  in  the 
suburbs,  stopped  to  make  a  sketch,  an  old 
woman,  who  caught  his  name,  came  up  to 
him  and  asked  him  whether  lie  was  the  tine 
young  man  with  whom  years  ago  she  had 
often  danced  at  tlie  town  balls.  He  dis- 
claimed all  previous  acquaintance  with  her. 
but  on  further  conversation  it  turned  out 
that  she  retained  very  clear  recollections  of 
his  brother  Abel,  who  had  been  in  Thion- 
ville  with  his  father. 

We  may  be  excused  for  introducing  an- 
other little  episode  of  this  visit.  The  poet's 
grandson  was  crossing  the  court-yard  of  the 
hotel  where  they  were  staying,  and  a  Prus- 
sian general,  attracted  by  the  child's  hand- 
some looks,  held  out  his  hand  and  said, 

"Will  you  shake  hands  with  me,  little 
man?" 

The  child  looked  steadily  at  the  officer  for 
a  moment,  and  then  said,  decidedly, 


"No." 

"Whose  child  is  that?"  the  officer  in- 
quired. 

"M.Victor  Hugo's  grandson,"  answered 
the  nurse. 

"  Oh,  then  I  understand,"  said  the  general; 
"you  are  quite  right,  little  man!"  and  he 
smiled  and  walked  away. 

When  Victor  Hugo  returned  to  Paris  at 
the  end  of  the  year  1871,  he  did  not  resume 
his  residence  with  Paul  Meurice,  from  whom 
he  had  received  such  hospitality  for  six 
months  before,  but  he  rented  apartments 
for  himself  at  No.  66  Rue  de  la  Roche- 
foucauld; in  these,  in  consequence  of  being 
in  mourning,  he  received  hardly  any  com- 
pany, and  after  about  fifteen  months  he  re- 
moved to  No.  21  Rue  de  Clichy,  where,  in- 
terested in  his  grandchildren,  and  still  de- 
voted to  the  welfare  of  his  country,  he  spent 
his  days  rejoicing  in  the  return  of  peace. 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


241 


CHAPTER  XXXIII. 

Votes  Obtained  in  July,  1871.— The  Mandat  Imperatif  and  the  Mandat  Contractiiel.—  Election  of  January,  1872. 
— "La  Liberation  du  Territoire."—  Death  of  Fraufois  Hugo — His  Funeral.— Speech  by  Louis  Blanc. — 
Funeral  of  Madame  Louis  Blanc.— The  Poet's  Creed.— "L'Ann^e  Terrible." 


IT  was  while  Victor  Hugo  was  travelling 
in  Luxembourg  that  the  elections  of  July  2, 
1871,  took  place.  They  were  seriously  af-  i 
fected  by  occurring  during  a  state  of  siege, 
and  by  the  erasure  of  140,000  names  from 
the  roll  of  electors.  The  absent  poet  ob- 
tained only  57,000  votes',  but  he  wrote  that 
he  was  more  proud  of  them  than  he  had 
been  of  the  214,000  which  he  had  received 
in  Paris  in  February. 

On  resigning  his  seat  at  Bordeaux,  he  had 
said,  "In  this  Assembly  there  is  a  majority 
that  will  not  allow  an  idea  to  be  matured.  It 
would  not  listen  to  Garibaldi ;  it  has  not  lis- 
tened to  me.  But  mark  me!  on  the  very  day 
that  M.  Thiers  ceases  to  give  it  satisfaction, 
the  Right  will  deal  with  him  just  in  the  same 
way  that  the  Left  has  dealt  with  Garibaldi 
and  myself;  and  nothing  would  surprise  me 
less  than  his  sending  in  his  resignation.  We 
are  experiencing  a  repetition  of  1815." 

It  was  a  prediction,  like  many  others  that 
Victor  Hugo  made,  which  was  destined  to  be 
fulfilled.  M.  Thiers  not  only  had  to  resign, 
but  for  a  time  it  seemed  very  doubtful 
whether  the  monarchical  party  would  not 
prevail.  Only  internal  dissension  prevented 
the  re-establishment  of  a  throne. 

Ever  zealous  in  the  cause  of  liberty,  Victor 
Hugo  took  advantage  of  every  opportunity 
to  intercede  for  all  those  who  by  court-mar- 
tial had  been  sentenced  to  transportation  or 
to  death.  He  begged  for  the  lives  of  Maro- 
teau,  Rossel,  Ferre,  Lullier,  and  Cremieux, 
declaring  that  political  executions  were  only 
like  a  subterranean  volcano,  perpetuating  the 
hidden  dangers  of  civil  war.  But  though 
he  pleaded  with  unremitting  earnestness,  his 
appeal  for  clemency  was  of  no  avail,  and  all 
the  answer  he  received  was  the  bloody  slay- 
ing of  the  hostages. 

In  December  it  was  proposed  to  him,  in 
view  of  the  approaching  supplementary 
elections,  that  he  should  accept  the  mandat 
imperatif.  This  he  could  not  do,  because, 
according  to  his  principles,  conscience  may 
16 


not  take  orders ;  but  he  endeavored  to  change 
the  mandat  imperatif  into  a  mandat  contrac- 
tuel,  so  that  there  might  be  a  more  open  dis- 
cussion between  the  elector  and  the  elected. 
The  amendment  was  accepted,  but  Victor 
Hugo  only  polled  95,900  votes,  against 
122,485,  which  were  registered  in  favor  of 
M.Vautrain;  his  defeat,  no  doubt,  being  in  a 
great  measure  attributable  to  his  posters, 
which  were  headed  "  Amnesty,"  and  avowed 
that  ' '  there  are  times  when  society  is  alarm- 
ed and  seeks  assistance  for  the  merciless." 

His  failure  to  secure  his  election  did  not 
prevent  him  from  continuing  to  apply  his 
energies  to  social  questions;  and  although 
he  was  invited  by  the  electors  of  Tours  to 
become  a  candidate  for  the  sixth  arrondisse- 
ment,  he  considered  that  for  a  time  he  could 
serve  the  Republic  better  by  remaining  out 
of  the  Assembly. 

He  published,  in  September,  1873,  a  poem 
which  he  called  "La  Liberation  du  Terri- 
toire," and  which  was  sold  for  the  benefit  of 
the  people  of  Alsace  and  Lorraine.  France 
at  the  time  was  getting  up  fetes  in  honor  of 
the  Shah  of  Persia,  the  Asiatic  potentate  of 
whom  it  is  affirmed  that,  having  once  con- 
quered a  city,  he  had  the  eyes  of  the  princi- 
pal inhabitants,  to  the  weight  of  about  thirty 
pounds,  carried  before  him  in  trays;  and 
this  moved  the  indignant  poet  to  ask  whether 
it  was  well  to  be  exhibiting  the  national  army 
to  such  a  man,  even  though  he  adorned  his 
horse's  tail  with  diamonds. 

Only  a  short  time  afterwards  he  was  call- 
ed upon  to  sustain  another  trying  blow.  His 
only  surviving  son,  Francois  Victor,  suc- 
cumbed on  the  26th  of  December  to  a  pain- 
ful illness  that  had  confined  him  to  his  room 
for  sixteen  months.  It  seemed  the  overflow- 
ing of  his  cup  of  grief,  and  yet  there  were 
men,  whose  names  had  better  not  be  men- 
tioned, who  jeered  at  the  father's  sorrow, 
and  openly  rejoiced  over  his  loss. 

Auguste  Vacquerie  inserted  an  admirable 
obituary  notice  in  Le  Eappel,  claiming  for 


242 


VICTOR  1IUGO  AND  HIS  TIME. 


Francois  the  reputation  of  an  historian  rather 
than  a  journalist,  and  praising  his  kind  and 
charming  disposition.  Long  before  the  hour 
lived  for  the  funeral,  a  dense  crowd  assem- 
bled before  the  house.  Shortly  after  noon 
the  coffin  was  carried  out,  followed  by  Vic- 
tor Hugo  hiniM •!!'.  who  went  on  foot,  accom- 
panied by  the  widow  of  Charles  Hugo,  who 


that  Louis  Blanc  made  a  short  oration,  in 
which  he  eulogized  the  integrity  and  the  in- 
dustry of  the  deceased.  Speaking  of  the  fa- 
ther's sorrow,  he  said  that  it  was  consoled  by 
the  happy  conviction  that  the  separation  of 
death  is  not  perpetual.  The  poet  believed 
his  own  words, 
"  The  grave  is  life's  prolonging,  not  its  dreary  end," 


FRANCOIS  VICTOR  HUGO. 


had  been  so  patient  in  her  devoted  care  to 
her  brother-in-law  during  his  illness  that  she 
was  almost  prostrate  with  weakness.  A  num- 
ber of  the  most  illustrious  men  in  Paris  join- 
ed the  procession  to  the  cemetery,  where,  the 
family  grave  being  already  full,  the  body 
was  deposited  in  a  temporary  vault.  The 
ceremony  was  performed  in  silence,  except 


and  repudiated  all  idea  of  final  severance. 
The  eternity  of  God  and  the  immortality 
of  the  soul  are  doctrines  that  strengthen  a 
man  in  all  his  afflictions,  and  make  him 
capable  of  living  still  so  as  to  benefit  hu- 
manity. 

Victor  Hugo  wept  bitterly  as  his  friends 
led  him  away  from  the  grave-side,  and  num- 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS  TIME. 


243 


bers  around  him  kept  shouting  aloud,  "Vive 
Victor  Hugo !  Vive  la  Republique !" 

Two  years  later  he  was  called  upon  to 
speak  similar  words  of  consolation  to  Louis 
Blanc,  who  had  to  consign  Madame  Louis 
Blanc  to  her  grave ;  and  he  recalled  the  time 
when  he  had  himself  been  chief  mourner: 

' '  What  my  friend  performed  for  me  two 
years  ago  is  an  office  that  I  now  discharge  to 
him.  The  tender  pressing  of  hand  to  hand 
at  the  brink  of  the  open  grave  is  a  part  of 
our  mortal  destiny;  and  destiny  seems  often 
to  decree  that  the  greatest  souls  should  be 
most  sorely  tried:  then  it  is  they  need  the 
consolation  of  a  sincere  belief." 

Such  belief,  it  may  confidently  be  affirmed, 
Victor  Hugo  possesses.  He  fails  to  recog- 
nize any  intermediate  agency  between  the 
soul  and  God,  and,  consequently,  his  con- 
science permits  him  to  admit  no  human 
counsel  in  divine  things;  he  repudiates  all 
narrow  dogmas  and  rejects  all  stern  denun- 
ciations of  eternal  punishment.  In  launch- 
ing forth  his  invectives  against  fanatics, 
monks,  inquisitors,  prelates,  popes,  and  Jes- 
uits, he  is  aware  only  of  a  desire  to  stand 
clear  of  superstition,  and  to  represent  God 
simply  as  he  is — good  and  great,  and  worthy 
to  be  loved  in  his  own  glory.  He  holds 
that  moral  rectitude  far  transcends'  all  relig- 
ious ordinance.  He  had  Lamennais  for  his 
confessor,  but,  like  Lamennais,  he  left  the 
bosom  of  the  Roman  Church,  saying  of  him- 
self: 

"  Yes,  by  education  I  was  a  Catholic,  but 
that  is  all  over  and  gone;  still  I  hold  my 
faith  in  the  immortality  of  the  soul.  I  am 
thankful  to  God  for  the  years  of  mercy  he 
has  granted  me,  and,  above  all,  I  am  thank- 
ful that  he  has  permitted  me  to  spend  those 
years  in  useful  labor." 

It  is  beyond  our  sphere  to  comment  upon 
this  creed.  With  some  differences,  he  holds 
the  doctrines  which  were  held  by  Voltaire,  who 
never  was  the  unbeliever  which  the  priests 
whom  he  attacked  desired  to  represent  him. 
Like  the  author  of  "  L'Essai  sur  les  Mceurs," 
he  has  been  exposed  to  the  vituperations  of 
the  clergy;  although  he  has  not  been  uni- 
formly hostile  to  Catholicism,  inasmuch  as 
he  hailed  the  accession  of  Pius  IX.  to  the 
popedom  in  1846,  believing  that  the  new 
pope  would  invest  the  tiara  with  the  best  at- 
tributes of  liberty  —  an  anticipation  which 
was  falsified  only  too  soon  by  the  publication 
of  the  Encyclical. 

From  the  period  of  his  expulsion  from 


Belgium  until  he  entered  the  Senate,  Victor 
Hugo  kept  himself  incessantly  occupied  in 
the  production  of  new  works,  all  designed  to 
further  the  cause  that  he  had  at  heart.  He 
wrote  an  admirable  essay  on  the  occasion  of 
the  Petrarch  Centenary,  and  another  on  the 
Philadelphia  Exhibition.  He  delivered  fu- 
neral orations  over  Madame  Paul  Meurice, 
Edgar  Quinet,  Frederic  Lemaitre  the  actor, 
and  Georges  Sand.  He  wrote  to  the  Italian 
democrats ;  he  pleaded  the  cause  of  the  con- 
vict Simbozel.  The  days  were  not  long 
enough  for  his  work. 

Day  by  day  throughout  the  siege  he  had 
kept  a  register  of  the  sad  history,  and  this 
formed  the  basis  of  "L'Annee  Terrible,"  a 
poetical  narrative  which  contains  some  of  his 
noblest  inspirations.  He  describes  the  catas- 
trophe of  Sedan,  and  sees  how  the  glory  of 
France  was  dimmed  when  the  sword  was  sur- 
rendered into  the  stern  conqueror's  hand;  he 
enumerates  one  fearful  episode  after  another, 
denounces  Germany  as  being  answerable  for 
the  fratricidal  war,  and  stigmatizes  the  in- 
vaders as  plunderers.  Apostrophizing  the 
cannon  that  had  been  founded  out  of  the 
proceeds  of  "Les  ChStiments,"  he  exclaims, 

"...  thon  deadly  weapon,  offspring  of  my  muse  ! 
Put  thou  thy  bronze  iuto  my  bowed  and  wounded 

heart, 

And  let  my  soul  its  vengeance  to  thy  bronze  im- 
part." 

Every  paragraph  may  be  recognized  as 
bearing  the  mark  of  being  written  on  the 
spur  of  the  moment,  and  as  characterized  by 
the  alternate  hopes  and  fears  that  each  hour 
brought  with  it;  but  while  he  bewails  his 
country's  defeat  and  suffers  with  her  agony, 
he  foretells  her  coming  resurrection. 

All  through  his  life  Victor  Hugo  has  cher- 
ished the  vision  of  universal  brotherhood, 
adapting  the  verses  of  "  Patria"  to  an  air  of 
Beethoven's,  deeming  it  a  symbol  of  frater- 
nal concord  between  France  and  Germany; 
but  after  Sedan  he  felt  that  he  had  no  alter- 
native but  to  encourage  the  national  de- 
fence, convinced  that  to  save  Paris  and 
France  was  the  way  to  save  civilization. 

However,  when  the  struggle  was  ended, 
and  while  many  in  their  despondency  were 
thinking  it  was  all  over  with  them,  his  was 
the  first  voice  to  cry,  "Courage  and  hope!" 
The  storm  passed  away,  but  it  had  left  a 
deeper  faith  in  his  heart;  he  felt  that  the  na- 
tion could  not  sink  like  lead,  and  so  he  made 
the  strings  of  his  lyre  resound  with  the  melo- 
dies of  peace,  and  to  pour  forth  the  strains 


244 


VICTOR  IIUGO  AND  1IIS  TIME. 


of  promise  that  the  day  was  not  far  distant 
when  France  would  woo  her  sons  to  prog- 
ress, and  in  the  track  of  princes  who  were 
drunk  with  blood  there  should  follow  the 
dawn  of  justice  and  liberty.  Contrasting  the 
prosperity  of  the  vanquished  with  the  em- 


barrassments of  the  conqueror,  he  adopted 
the  language  of  prediction,  asserting  that 
France  had  only  to  be  faithful  to  her  mission, 
and  France  could  not  be  annihilated. 

Events  have  since  proved  that  the  poet 
was  right. 


"L'ANNEE  TERRIBLE." 


246 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  UIS   TIME. 


CHAPTER  XXXIV. 

"Qnatre-vingt  treize."—  Criticism.— Article  by  M.  Escoffler.—  Victor  Hugo's  Good  Memory.— "  Mes  Fils."— 
"Actes  et  Paroles."— "  Pour  tm  Soldat."— Second  Series  of  "La  Logende  dea  Sidcles."— The  Rue  de 
Clichy.— Receptions.— Conversation. 


THE  last  romance  published  by  Victor 
Hugo  was  "  Quatre-vingt-treize."  It  appear- 
ed in  1874,  and,  like  "Les  Miserables,"  was 
translated  at  once  into  many  languages.  The 
tale  of  the  year  of  blood  is  most  strikingly 
told,  the  object  of  the  book  being  to  show 
how,  from  that  sanguinary  atmosphere  and 
from  that  merciless  strife,  progress  and  hu- 
manity rose  up  and  showed  themselves  tri- 
umphant. 

As  a  second  title  the  work  was  called  "La 
Guerre  Civile;"  and  La  Vendee,  as  the  last 
asylum  of  the  royalist  faith,  is  made  the  thea- 
tre of  a  dramatic  history  of  which  the  scenes 
are  relieved  by  charming  descriptions  of  the 
country.  The  heroes  of  the  book  are  imper- 
sonations of  all  the  passions,  the  stoical  vir- 
tue, the  indomitable  courage,  the  stern  re- 
sistance, which  characterized  the  men  of  the 
period. 

There  is  a  magnificent  chapter  which  seems 
to  bring  into  fresh  life  the  Paris  of  '93;  it 
represents  the  city  in  all  its  picturesqueness, 
seething  and  devoid  of  rest,  while  the  ac- 
count of  the  giant  insurrection  is  entrancing 
in  its  interest  and  graced  by  passages  of  ex- 
quisite sentiment.  The  book  received  the 
most  favorable  criticism,  although  it  was  at 
last  just  as  it  had  been  at  first,  that  the  au- 
thor's vocabulary  was  somewhat  severely 
censured.  It  was  in  three  volumes,  and  an 
anecdote  is  told  about  the  first  edition  which 
may  be  worth  repeating. 

On  the  day  of  the  first  publication  of  the 
book,  M.  Escoffler,  the  editor  of  Le  Petit 
Jon ni <il,  was  desirous  to  be  the  first  to  re- 
view it.  Le  Petit  Journal,  it  should  be  said, 
•was  a  paper  which  had  done  much  to  raise 
the  moral  standard  of  the  people,  and  M. 
Escoffler,  under  the  pseudonym  of  Thomas 
Grimm,  had  contributed  a  series  of  articles 
remarkable  alike  for  their  conciseness  and 
for  their  strong  sense.  On  this  occasion  he 
received  a  copy  of  the  first  volume  at  mid- 
day, followed  two  hours  afterwards  by  a 
copy  of  the  third  volume,  with  a  message 


that  he  could  not  have  the  second  volume  un- 
til after  five  o'clock.  Determined  not  to  be 
baffled,  M.  Escoffler  hurried  off  to  the  house 
of  Paul  Meurice,  where  he  obtained  an  in- 
terview with  Victor  Hugo,  and  learned  the 
full  particulars  about  the  missing  volume  in 
time  to  complete  his  review  for  the  next 
morning. 

As  an  instance  of  the  poet's  retentive 
memory,  it  may  be  mentioned  that  when  M. 
Escoffler  was  introduced  to  him,  although 
they  had  never  met  before,  Victor  Hugo  said 
to  him, 

"I  remember,  M.  Escoffler,  being  rmich 
struck  with  an  observation  of  yours  long 
ago ;  you  observed  that  '  Les  Girondins '  had 
been  the  work  of  an  epoch,  and  that  '  Les 
Miserables  '  would  probably  be  the  work  of 
a  century." 

It  was  more  than  eleven  years  since  Es- 
coffler had  written  this  in  a  little  Toulouse 
newspaper.  Many  similar  instances  have 
been  related  which  demonstrate  in  how 
marked  a  degree  Victor  Hugo  possesses  the 
faculty  of  extraordinary  memory. 

After  "Quatre-vingt-treize"  there  ap- 
peared in  1874  a  touching  pamphlet  which 
the  author  called  "  Mes  Fils,"  being  a  cry  of 
hope  which  he  associated  with  a  tribute  of 
affection  to  his  own  dead  children.  In  1875 
a  new  edition  was  published  of  "Napoleon 
le  Petit,"  the  original  of  which  had  been 
issued  in  London  in  1852. 

This  was  followed  by  a  work  entitled 
"  Actes  et  Paroles:  avant,  pendant,  et  dcpuis 
1'Exil,"  of  which  Victor  Hugo  has  given  his 
own  description.  He  says  about  it: 

' '  The  trilogy  is  not  mine,  but  the  Emperor 
Napoleon's;  he  it  is  who  has  divided  my  life; 
to  him  the  honor  of  it  is  due.  That  which 
is  Bonaparte's  we  must  render  to  Caesar." 

Each  of  the  three  volumes  was  devoted  to 
a  separate  period  of  the  exile,  and  from  their 
pages  have  been  drawn  many  of  the  inci- 
dents of  the  present  work. 

Commencing  with  an  admonition  to  resist- 


. 


PETIT  PAUL  ("LA  LEGENDF.   HK8  SIECLES  "). 


248 


VICTOR  HUGO  AXD  UIS   TIME. 


ance,  the  "  Actcs  et  Paroles"  concludes 
with  an  exhortation  to  clemency;  resistance 
to  tyrants  should  not  be  deemed  inconsistent 
with  clemency  to  the  vanquished. 

Some  time  previously  to  this,  the  prolific 
author  had  issued  his  pamphlet  "Pour  un 
Soldnt,"  a  production  which  realized  a  double 
iK-m-fit,  as  not  only  did  it  contribute  to  the 
saving  of  the  life  of  the  poor  soldier  who 
had  been  condemned  for  a  very  venial  crime, 
but  the  profits  of  the  sale  were  applied  to  the 
relief  of  the  sufferers  in  Alsace  and  Lorraine. 

Next,  in  1877,  appeared  the  second  part  of 
"La  Legende  des  Siecles,"  proving  itself  a 
worthy  sequel  to  the  first.  Here,  once  again, 
the  poet  surveys  the  cycle  of  humanity  from 
the  days  of  Paradise  to  the  future  which  he 
anticipates;  he  takes  his  themes  alike  from 
the  legends  of  the  heroic  age  of  Greece  and 
from  the  domains  of  actual  history,  and,  af- 
ter singing  of  the  achievements  of  the  great, 
he  dedicates  his  lay  to  the  little  ones,  and 
in  a  charming  poem  entitled  "Petit  Paul" 
he  depicts  with  fascinating  pathos  all  the 
tenderness  and  all  the  sorrows  of  childhood. 

On  the  opening  page  of  the  book  the  au- 
thor has  inscribed  a  notice  to  the  effect  that 
the  final  series  of  "La  Legende  des  Siecles " 
will  be  published  if  his  life  be  spared  to 
complete  the  task,  but  it  has  not  yet  appear- 
ed, although  it  is  known  to  be  almost  fin- 
ished. 

At  the  date  when  the  second  series  was 
published  Victor  Hugo  was  residing  at  No. 
21  Rue  de  Clichy ;  circumstances  having 
thus  brought  him  back  to  the  very  street 
where  he  had  passed  some  of  his  early  years, 
and  close  to  the  school  where  he  had  learned 
to  read.  He  shared  the  apartments  on  the 
fourth  floor  with  Madame  Charles  Hugo, 
who,  after  remaining  a  widow  several  years, 
was  married  to  M.  Charles  Lockroy,  deputy 
for  the  Seine,  and  well  known  both  as  a  pol- 
itician and  a  man  of  letters.  The  third  floor 
was  occupied  by  Madame  Drouet,  the  lady 
who  had  made  such  exertions  on  his  behalf 
when  he  was  proscribed  in  1851,  and  who 
now  placed  her  salon  at  his  disposal  for  the 
reception  of  his  friends. 

This  salon,  decorated  with  furniture  after 
the  poet's  own  taste,  may  be  said  to  have 
become  historical,  as  having  been  associated 
with  many  of  the  learned  men  of  the  day; 
and  the  author  of  this  volume  may  state  that 
it  has  been  at  the  receptions  in  this  apart- 
ment that  he  has  enjoyed  the  acquaintance 
of  the  great  author,  who  once  remarked  to 


him,  with  an  expression  of  sadness,  that  the 
works  which  he  had  dreamed  of  writing 
were  infinitely  more  numerous  than  those 
which  he  had  ever  found  time  to  write. 

The  hand,  no  doubt,  is  too  slow  for  the 
gigantic  work  that  the  poet  conceives.  And 
yet  no  moment  is  ever  lost.  Generally  up 
with  the  sun,  he  writes  until  midday,  and 
often  until  two  o'clock.  Then,  after  a  light 
luncheon,  he  goes  to  the  Senate,  where  dur- 
ing intervals  of  debate  he  despatches  all  his 
correspondence.  He  finds  his  recreation 
generally  by  taking  a  walk,  although  not 
unfrequently  he  will  mount  to  the  top  of 
an  omnibus  just  for  the  sake  of  finding  him- 
self in  the  society  of  the  people  with  whom 
he  has  shown  his  boundless  sympathy.  At 
eight  o'clock  he  dines,  making  it  his  habit 
to  invite  not  only  his  nearest  friends,  but 
such  as  he  thinks  stand  in  need  of  encour- 
agement, to  join  him  and  his  grandchildren 
at  their  social  meal. 

At  table  Victor  Hugo  relaxes  entirely  from 
his  seriousness.  The  powerful  orator,  the 
earnest  pleader,  becomes  the  charming  and 
attractive  host,  full  of  anecdote,  censuring 
whatever  is  vile,  but  ever  ready  to  make 
merry  over  what  is  grotesque.  Punctually 
at  ten  he  adjourns  to  the  salon,  where,  in  the 
midst  of  a  distinguished  circle,  he  joins  in 
the  free  flow  of  conversation.  Always  affa- 
ble, he  has  not  merely  a  cordial  welcome  for 
the  renowned,  but  a  word  of  kind  animation 
for  the  humblest  recruit  in  the  literary  army. 
No  one  can  leave  his  company  without  feel- 
ing reassured  and  delighted. 

On  these  occasions  he  makes  a  fine  picture. 
Hale  and  vigorous  in  his  appearance,  precise 
and  elegant  in  his  attire,  with  unbowed  head, 
and  with  thick  white  hair  crowning  his  un- 
furrowed  brow,  he  commands  involuntary 
admiration.  Round  his  face  is  a  close  white 
beard,  which  he  has  worn  since  the  later 
period  of  his  sojourn  in  Guernsey  as  a  safe- 
guard against  sore  throat,  but  he  shows  no 
token  of  infirmity.  His  countenance  may 
be  said  to  have  in  it  something  both  of  the 
lion  and  of  the  eagle,  yet  his  voice  is  grave, 
and  his  manner  singularly  gentle. 

The  writer  of  this  record  of  "Victor  Hugo 
and  his  Time"  cannot  recall  without  the 
liveliest  pleasure  either  the  receptions  in  the 
salon  or  the  various  tete-d-tete  interviews  to 
which  he  has  been  admitted.  He  recollects 
how,  on  one  occasion,  the  great  master  de- 
nounced to  him  the  realistic  character  of 
many  modern  romances,  regarding  them  as 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


249 


unwholesome  and  degraded,  and  how,  on  an- 
other occasion,  he  spoke  with  vehemence 
against  the  inconsistency  of  the  Republic  in 
admitting  various  creatures  of  the  Empire  to 
several  public  offices ;  but  neither  his  literary 
convictions  nor  his  political  partialities  ever 
really  disturbed  the  calmness  of  his  line  of 
thought,  and,  as  he  states  in  the  admirable 
letter  which  stands  at  the  beginning  of  the 
present  volume,  his  anger  has  never  been 
vented  upon  anything  except  wrong. 

As  a  general  rule,  his  personal  enemies  do 
not  give  him  much  concern;  but  if  a  name 
that  is  specially  odious  should  happen  to  be 


mentioned,  he  usually  finds  words  to  express 
his  aversion.  Thus  on  our  incidentally  al- 
luding to  Merimee,  he  broke  out, 

"That  man  leaves  an  infamous  memory 
behind  him.  He  used  his  talent  to  declaim 
about  what  his  heart  was  too  barren  to  un- 
derstand. " 

But  such  outbursts  never  seriously  affect 
Victor  Hugo's  habitual  serenity;  his  mind, 
like  his  books,  would  seem  to  be  the  simple 
unassuming  expression  of  humanity.  It  is 
the  love  of  humanity  that  has  guided  his 
genius,  and  his  genius  has  made  his  works 
imperishable. 


250 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  Ulti   TIME. 


CHAPTER   XXXV. 

1  L'Art  d'tHre  Grand-pere." — Georges  nud  Jeanne.  —  Romps,  Tides,  and  Diversions "L'Histoire  d'un 

Crime." 


A  BRIEF  chapter  must  be  devoted  to  Vic- 
tor Hugo's  love  of  children. 

Some  few  months  before  the  publication 
of  the  second  series  of  "La  Legende  des 
Siecles"  in  1877,  the  poet  published  a  brill- 
iant production,  which  he  called  "  L'Art 
d'etre  Grand-p6re."  It  was  a  kind  of  sequel 
to  the  "Livre  des  Meres,  ou  Livre  des  En- 
fants,"  which  consisted  of  a  number  of  ex- 
tracts selected  from  his  works  by  his  ad- 
mirer, Hetzel,  who,  in  introducing  his  book 
to  the  public,  lauded  Victor  Hugo's  peculiar 
faculty  for  describing  the  young,  and  de- 
clared that  his  reputation  as  the  most  sensi- 
tive and  tender  of  authors  stood  unrivalled. 
The  extracts  are  full  of  the  merry  songs  of 
birds  and  the  bright  warblings  of  childhood, 
though  at  times  they  are  tinged  with  sorrow 
too. 

Ever  considerate  for  the  defenceless,  Vic- 
tor Hugo  stands  up  for  the  rights  of  women 
and  children.  While  Mussel  has  dedicated 
his  strophes  to  love  as  a  passion,  Hugo  has 
regarded  love  as  a  sacred  duty;  he  speaks 
directly  to  the  maternal  heart,  and  is  con- 
stant in  his  endeavor  to  reinstate  such  as 
have  fallen  victims  to  misery  or  social  laws. 
He  is  pathetic  over  an  infant's  cradle,  he  is 
delighted  at  childhood's  prattle,  and  to  him 
the  fair-haired  head  of  innocence  is  as  full  of 
interest  as  the  glory  of  a  man. 

Thus  beaming  with  affection  for  children 
in  general,  it  is  not  in  the  least  a  matter  of 
surprise  that  he  should  make  his  two  grand- 
children, Georges  and  Jeanne,  the  hero  and 
heroine  of  "L'Art  d'etre  Grand-p^re,"  a 
work  into  which  he  has  thrown  the  fulness 
of  his  genius  and  the  freshness  of  his  love. 

He  has  been  taken  to  task  about  the  title 
of  the  book,  and  told  that  there  is  no  place 
for  "  art "  in  such  a  connection,  but  he  has 
met  the  accusation  with  a  smile;  and  when 
criticised  for  his  tone  of  over-indulgence,  he 
has  replied : 

"  I  own  I  want  to  have  nothing  to  do  with 
society.  You  say  to  me,  '  All  roses  have 
thorns.'  I  say  to  you,  'You  may  pluck 


them  off  if  you  will ; '  for  myself,  I  mean  to 
inhale  the  fragrance  of  the  rosebuds." 

It  has  been  suggested  that  the  book  might 
more  appropriately  be  called  the  "  Pleasure 
of  Being  a  Grandfather;"  but,  remembering 
his  own  bereavements,  and  mindful  of  the 
sorrows  of  others,  he  felt  that  in  many  quar- 
ters the  mention  of  "pleasure  "  might  sound 
almost  like  a  mockery. 

He  claimed  the  gratification  of  being  in- 
dulgent as  a  right,  agreeing  entirely  with  M. 
Gaucher,  who,  in  an  article  in  the  Revue  Po- 
litique  et  Litteraire,  remarks  that  "  a  father's 
duties  are  by  no  means  light;  he  has  to  in- 
struct, to  correct,  to  chastise:  but  with  the 
grandfather  it  is  different;  he  is  privileged 
to  love  and  to  spoil." 

While  the  book  abounds  in  many  exquisite 
and  gentle  admonitions,  it  sparkles  with  the 
fun  and  sprightliness  of  child's  play.  While 
the  poet  inculcates  kindness,  obedience,  and 
charity,  he  delights  to  tell  how  he  has  ' '  plun- 
dered the  housekeeper's  jam-pots  "  for  the 
gratification  of  his  little  pets,  and  how  he 
was  daring  enough  to  distribute  between 
them  some  dishes  of  strawberries  that  had 
been  put  ready  for  the  after-dinner  dessert, 
taking  care,  at  the  same  time,  to  bid  the 
children  fetch  in  some  houseless  orphans 
that  were  crouching  under  the  window,  and 
make  them  share  the  dainty  dishes  with 
themselves. 

Undaunted  as  he  ever  stood  against  the 
threats  and  persecutions  of  political  oppo- 
nents, he  acknowledged  that  a  child  had  ever 
the  power  to  overcome  him: 

"  Behold  me  by  an  infant  now  subdued  !" 

and  avowed  that  he  was  not  ashamed  of  any 
such  humiliation,  and  sang  of  the  pleasure 
he  found  in  associating  with  the  young,  un- 
der the  title  of  "  Laetitia  Rerum,"  making  it 
his  pleasant  theme : 

"  My  children,  in  the  beauty  of  your  eye 
The  empyrean  blue  can  I  descry; 
Your  merry  langluer  like  the  springtime  cheers, 
And  like  the  morning  dew-drops  fall  your  tears !" 


MATIIA  ("LA  LEGENDE  DBS  8IECLES "). 
(Drairn  by  J.  P.  Laurent.) 


252 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  UIX   TIME. 


And  quite  in  accordance  with  what  he 
wrote  in  his  verse  was  his  personal  practice. 
Nothing  could  exceed  his  kindness,  and  no 
one  ever  took  more  pains  to  tell  old  tales 
and  to  invent  new  ones  to  awaken  the  interest 
of  a  juvenile  audience. 

Some  of  these  tales  were  full  of  wonder, 
like  "La  Bonne  Puce  et  le  Roi  Mediant, " 
that  had  a  very  startling  moral;  some  of 


the  animal  in  a  state  of  continual  perplex- 
ity. 

Nor  was  the  grandfather-poet  ever  weary 
of  devising  little  schemes  to  divert  the  young 
people,  no  one  being  more  expert  in  balanc- 
ing a  fork  on  a  decanter  stopper,  or  carving 
a  pig  out  of  a  piece  of  bread,  making  lu- 
cifer-matches  do  duty  for  legs;  nor  was  any 
one  more  interested  in  arranging  juvenile  en- 


GEORGES   AND   JEANNE. 
("  L'Art  d'etre  Grand-pere.") 


them  were  pregnant  with  instruction,  like 
that  of  the  little"  dog  who  was  transformed 
into  a  beautiful  angel,  because  of  its  fidelity 
to  a  little  girl;  and  some  of  them  afforded 
infinite  amusement,  such  as  the  tale  of  a 
donkey  with  the  two  long  ears,  one  of 
which  always  heard  "yes"  and  the  other 
always  heard  "no,"  consequently  keeping 


tertainments,  especially  at  the  season  of  the 
new  year.  It  was  at  a  Twelfth-night  party 
that  young  Jeanne  showed  how  early  she 
had  imbibed  her  grandfather's  political  opin- 
ions; in  the  midst  of  the  "drawing  of  kings," 
which  was  the  specialty  of  the  occasion, 
getting  weary  of  hearing  such  constant  rep- 
etition of  "Le  roi!  le  roi!"  she  mounted  on  a 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


253 


chair,  and  began  crying,  "Vive  la  Repub- 
lique!" 

While  they  were  quite  young,  his  little 
grandchildren  were  allowed  to  bring  their 
cat  into  the  salon  before  dinner,  when  the  di- 
version in  the  way  of  romping  would  be  un- 
limited. The  venerable  gentleman  whom 
they  called  their  "papapa"  would  permit 
them  to  pull  his  fine  white  beard,  and  to  roll 
themselves  over  him,  laughing  heartily  as  he 
called  out, 

"  Ah!  I  see  you  know  what  a  grandfather 
is  made  for:  he  is  made  to  sit  upon!" 

As  an  illustration  of  his  love  for  domestic 
joys,  we  may  instance  his  definition  of 
Paradise  as  "a  place  where  children  are  al- 
ways little  and  parents  are  always  young." 
Young  in  his  sympathies  he  has  ever  been; 
and  it  will  be  reckoned  no  serious  betrayal 
of  secret  confidences  to  say  that  he  has  been 
known  to  carry  off  a  pot  of  preserves  to 


his  little  Jeanne  when  she  has  been  shut 
up  in  disgrace,  and  that  he  has  made  a 
point  of  refusing  to  touch  his  fruit  at  des- 
sert to  show  his  grief  at  her  having  been 
naughty. 

And  all  this  love  for  the  little  ones  is  not 
in  the  least  inconsistent  with  his  detestation 
of  the  criminalities  of  the  great.  Under  al- 
most the  same  inspiration  that  produced  the 
echoes  of  infantile  prattle  in  the  "Art  of  Be- 
ing a  Grandfather,"  he  composed  "  The  His- 
tory of  a  Crime,"  a  work  which  was  issued 
on  the  eve  of  the  elections  of  1877,  and  of 
which  he  said, 

"The  need  of  this  book  is  not  only  present, 
but  urgent ;  therefore  I  publish  it. " 

It  was  just  the  same  intuition  into  the 
true  principle  of  equity  that  made  him  stern 
towards  the  iniquity  of  tyrants,  and  tender 
towards  the  failings  of  the  weak  and  the 
inexperience  of  the  young. 


254 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TINE. 


CHAPTER  XXXVI. 

Victor  Hngo's  Creed.— Belief  in  the  Immortality  of  the  Soul.—  Accusation  of  Being  an  Atheist — 
— "Religions  et  Religion." — "La  Pitie'  Supreme." — "L'Ane." 


WE  have  already  said  that  it  is  not  our 
place  to  comment  upon  Victor  Hugo's  creed. 
What  that  creed  is  may  be  gathered  alike 
from  his  philosophical  works  and  from  the 
explanations  which  he  has  himself  given  in 
rrl.-ition  to  it. 

He  avows  himself  a  firm  believer  in  the 
immortality  of  the  soul.  A  rationalist  one 
day  said  to  him,  as  is  related  by  Madame  de 
Girardin, 

"So  am  I  a  believer  to  a  certain  extent; 
but  surely  the  outcasts  of  society  can  have 
no  faith  in  their  own  immortality!" 

To  which  Victor  Hugo  replied, 

"  Perhaps  they  believe  in  it  more  than  you 
do." 

According  to  Arsene  Houssaye,  the  poet 
has  given  a  general  exposition  of  his  relig- 
ious creed  in  something  like  the  following 
terms: 

"  I  am  conscious  within  myself  of  the  cer- 
tainty of  a  future  life.  Just  as,  in  a  forest 
that  is  perpetually  felled,  young  sprouts  start 
up  with  renewed  vigor,  so  my  thoughts  ever 
rise  higher  and  higher  towards  the  infinite; 
the  earth  affords  me  her  generous  sap,  but 
the  heaven  irradiates  me  with  the  light  of 
half -seen  worlds.  The  nearer  I  approach 
my  end,  the  clearer  do  I  hear  the  immortal 
symphonies  of  worlds  that  call  me  to  them- 
selves. For  half  a  century  I  have  been  out- 
pouring my  volumes  of  thought  in  prose 
and  in  verse,  in  history,  philosophy,  drama, 
romance,  ode,  and  ballad,  yet  I  appear  to 
myself  not  to  have  said  a  thousandth  part  of 
what  is  within  me;  and  when  I  am  laid  in 
the  tomb  I  shall  not  reckon  that  my  life  is 
finished.  The  grave  is  not  a  cul-de-sac,  it  is  an 
avenue;  death  is  the  sublime  prolongation  of 
life,  not  its  dreary  finish;  it  closes  on  the 
twilight,  it  opens  in  the  dawn.  My  work  is 
only  begun ;  I  yearn  for  it  to  become  higher 
and  nobler;  and  this  craving  for  the  infinite 
demonstrates  that  there  is  an  infinity." 

And  in  reply  to  the  argument  that  those 
powers  of  his  had  been  generated  by  Nature, 
the  visible  mother  of  occult  forces,  he  said, 


"There  are  no  occult  forces;  occult  fun c 
was  chaos;  luminous  force  is  God.  Man  is 
;i  reduced  copy  of  God,  a  duodecimo  as  it 
were  of  the  gigantic  folio;  hut  Mill  the  same 
book.  Atom  as  I  am,  I  can  still  feel  that  I 
am  divine,  gifted  with  divine  power  because 
I  can  dear  up  the  chaos  that  is  within  me. 
The  books  I  write  are  worlds  of  themselves, 
and  I  say  this  without  a  particle  of  vanity, 
no  more  cherishing  a  feeling  of  pride  than  a 
bird  that  contributes  its  part  to  the  universal 
song.  I  am  nothing,  a  passing  echo,  an 
evanescent  cloud;  but  let  me  only  live  on 
through  my  future  existences,  let  me  con- 
tinue the  work  I  have  begun,  let  me  sur- 
mount the  perils,  the  passions,  the  agonies, 
that  age  after  age  may  be  before  me,  and 
who  shall  tell  whether  I  may  not  rise  to  have 
a  place  in  the  council-chamber  of  the  ruler 
that  controls  all,  and  whom  we  own  as  God?" 

The  accusations  of  being  an  atheist  he  has 
met  by  drawing  a  satirical  picture  *  of  what 
he  conceives  to  be  the  Catholic  representa- 
tion of  the  Deity,  which  he  concludes  by  ex- 
claiming, ' '  Yes,  priest,  I  am  an  unbeliever  in 
such  a  God,"  and  proceeds  to  describe  the 
God  whom  he  acknowledges  to  be  the  per- 
sonification of  the  true,  the  just,  and  the 
beautiful;  who  neither  constructs  nor  de- 
stroys religions;  who  is  impalpable,  but  ev- 
erywhere to  be  felt ;  who  is  supreme  and 


"  S'il  agit  d'un  bonhomme  a  longne  barbe  blanche, 

•  •*•««« 

Dans  la  nnee,  ayant  nn  oisean  sur  la  tete, 
A  sa  droite  nn  archange,  a  sa  ganche  nn  proph&te, 
Entre  ses  bras  son  flls,  pule  et  perc6  de  clous, 
Un  et  triple,  6contant  dee  harpes,  dieu  jaloux. 

•  «•«•*• 

En  colfcre  et  faisant  la  moue  an  genre  hnmain, 
Comme  nn  P6re  Duchfine,  nn  grand  sabre  n  la  main ; 
Dien  qni  volontiers  damne  et  rarement  pardonue ; 
Qni,  sur  un  passe-droit,  consnlte  une  madone ; 
Dieu  qui,  dans  son  ciel  bleu,  se  donne  le  devoir 
D'imiter  nos  deTauts,  et  le  luxe  d'avoir 
Des  fli'aux.  conune  on  a  des  chiens,  qui  trouble 

Pordre, 

Lflche  snr  nous  Nemrod  et  Cyrus,  nous  fait  mordre 
Par  Cambyse,  et  nous  jette  aux  jambes  Attila : 
Pretre,  oui,  je  suis  athee,  a  ce  vieux  bon  Dieu-la." 


"LE  PAPE." 


256 


VICTOR  IIUOO  AND  III8   TIME, 


unchangeable,  an  eternal  principle,  our  very 
conscience. 

To  develop  this  creed  is  the  design  of  sev- 
eral of  his  later  works.  In  "Le  Pape"  he 
depicts  an  ideal  pastor  making  clemency  the 
principle  of  his  power,  striving  ever  to  be 
gentle  and  sympathizing  with  every  phase  of 
suffering,  drawing  around  him  the  outcast 
and  despised,  repudiating  infallibility,  de- 
nouncing war,  delivering  the  message  of 
peace,  and  thus  securing  the  divine  benedic- 
tion on  himself.  The  book  stirred  up  the  in- 
dignation of  the  Catholics,  and  M.  de  Brigny 
issued  a  volume  of  poetry  entitled  "Pape 
contre  Pape,  ou  le  Pape  de  Victor  Hugo  et  le 
Pape  de  1'Eglise."  In  reply  to  the  storm 
that  had  been  raised  against  him,  Victor 
Hugo,  in  1879,  brought  out  "La  Pitie  su- 
preme,"  the  gist  of  which  was  to  bespeak  par- 
don and  pity  for  such  as  were  tyrants  through 
their  own  ignorance  and  defective  education. 
Like  John  Huss  sighing  "Poor  man!"  over 
the  executioner  who  was  kindling  the  stake, 
the  poet  here  outpours  his  eager  desire  to 
rescue 

"The  hangman  from  his  torture,  and  the  tyrant  from 
his  throne." 

Tolerance  is  the  basis  of  Victor  Hugo's 
creed,  and  this  tolerance  it  was  that  inspired 
him  to  write  his  "Religions  et  Religion," 
which  was  published  in  1880  with  the  notice 
prefixed: 

"This  book  was  commenced  in  1870,  and 
completed  in  1880.  The  year  1870  gave  in- 


fallibility to  the  papacy,  and  Sedan  to  the 
Empire.  What  is  the  year  1880  to  bring 
forth?" 

In  this  philosophical  poem,  the  poet's 
thoughts  turn  much  to  the  future;  he  pro- 
fesses his  resolve  to  be  free  from  subservience 
to  superstition ;  the  theme  of  the  book  is  the 
delineation  of  what  the  religions  of  the  world 
seem  to  be,  and  of  what  to  his  mind  true  re- 
ligion ought  to  be :  founded  solely  on  moral- 
ity ;  full  of  care  for  the  rights,  the  duties,  and 
the  sorrows  of  humanity,  and  never  losing 
sight  of  the  immortality  of  the  soul. 

Prompted  by  his  continued  desire  to  over- 
throw pedantry  and  to  replace  it  by  knowl- 
edge, he  has  since  published  "  L'Ane,"  where 
the  ass  prophesies  like  Balaam's,  and  holds 
forth  against  those  whom  the  author  would 
denounce  as  false  teachers.  He  calls  his  ass 
"Patience,"  and,  in  the  daring  way  that  is 
characteristic  of  his  genius,  he  makes  the 
creature  trample  underfoot  the  musty  libra- 
ries, the  illegible  manuscripts,  and  the  worn- 
out  folios  that  he  maintains  have  too  long 
stifled  the  progress  of  the  human  intellect. 

Louis  Ulbach  has  observed  of  the  book 
that  in  its  pages  "the  poet,  at  the  climax  of 
his  life,  dazzled  though  he  is  by  the  nearness 
of  the  dawn  beyond,  glances  back  at  those 
whom  he  has  left  behind,  addresses  them 
with  raillery  keen  enough  to  stimulate  them, 
but  not  stern  enough  to  discourage  them, 
and  from  the  standpoint  of  his  serenity  puts 
a  fool's  cap  upon  all  false  science,  false  wis- 
dom, and  false  piety." 


"HERNANI,"  ACT  iv.  SCENE  rv. 
17 


258 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  UIS  TIME. 


CHAPTER  XXXVII. 

Revival  of  "Hernani."— Banquet  in  Celebration.— Revivals  of  "Ruy  Bias,"  "Notre  Dame  de  Paris,"  and 
"  Les  Miserable?."— Saint- Victor  on  Victor  Hugo's  Vitality.— Banquet  at  the  Hotel  Continental,  February 
26, 1880.— Victor  Hugo's  Speech. 

torn  of  vanity,  though  an  expression  of  noble 
satisfaction  rested  on  his  countenance. 

A  rare  cordiality  reigned  in  the  assembly. 
There  were  met  together  representatives  of 
journals  of  the  most  antagonistic  views. 
writers  who  fought  obstinate  battles  in  the 
daily  press;  but  the  poet, who,  in  spite  of  his 
seventy-five  years,  set  them  an  example  of 
youth,  was  a  living  type  of  Fraternity.  1  >i>- 
cord  seemed  banished  from  the  midst,  and 
one  thought  animated  every  heart;  the  pres- 
ence of  the  great  man  they  had  met  to  honor 
appeared  for  the  time  not  merely  to  realize 
the  ideal  of  a  republic  of  letters,  but  to  exalt 
that  republic  above  the  level  of  human  pas- 
sion. 

Similar  entertainments  were  given  both 
after  the  hundredth  performance  of  "Ruy 
Bias"  and  the  hundredth  performance  of 
"•Notre  Dame  de  Paris." 

The  romance  of  "Notre  Dame  de  Paris" 
had  been  dramatized  by  Francois  Hugo,  and 
after  this  version  had  been  revised  by  Paul 
Meurice  it  was  performed  at  the  "Theatre 
des  Nations,"  where,  although  Victor  Hugo 
endeavored  to  screen  himself  from  the  public 
eye,  he  was  recognized  and  received  an  en- 
thusiastic ovation  from  two  thousand  spec- 
tators. 

A  welcome  reception  was  accorded  to  the 
play  founded  upon  "Les Miserables," which 
we  have  already  mentioned. 

But  the  noblest  of  all  the  fetes  that  marked 
the  revival  of  the  poet's  dramas  was  that 
which  was  celebrated  at  the  Theatre  Fran- 
cais  in  1880,  in  honor  of  the  fiftieth  anni- 
versary of  "Hernani,"  which  was  esteemed 
as  "the  golden  wedding"  of  his  genius  and 
his  glory.  On  the  25th  of  February,  1830, 
the  first  representation  had  been  given  amid 
the  uproar  of  opposition;  and  now  on  the 
25th  of  February,  1880,  the  company  of  the 
Comedie  Francaise,  with  a  glowing  pride, 
performed  the  masterpiece  of  which  it  is 
scarcely  an  exaggeration  to  declare  that  it  is 
the  consummation  of  artistic  beauty.  On 


ALTHOUGH  Victor  Hugo  has  outlived  the 
hostility  of  adversaries,  and  now  commands 
unbounded  respect,  persecution  long  con- 
tinued to  pursue  him,  and  during  the  state 
of  siege  so  long  maintained  by  the  Bordeaux 
Assembly  all  his  dramas  were  prohibited, 
official  instructions  on  this  matter  being  en- 
forced by  military  power.  Sword  in  hand, 
General  Ladmirault  stopped  the  performance 
of  "  Le  Roi  s'Amuse,"  and  it  has  not  since 
appeared  upon  the  stage ;  and  another  official 
had  "Le  Revenant"  erased  from  the  play- 
bills, insisting  that  nothing  of  Victor  Hugo's 
should  be  performed  without  a  special  li- 
cense, such  license  to  be  renewed  from  even- 
ing to  evening. 

But  in  November,  1877,  "Hernani"  was 
revived  by  the  Comedie  Fran9aise,  and  was 
received  with  great  enthusiasm.  The  actors 
and  actresses  proved  themselves  worthy  of 
their  task.  Mile.  Sarah  Bernhardt  under- 
took the  part  originally  filled  by  Mile.  Mars, 
and  showed  herself  quite  as  successful  as  her 
popular  predecessor. 

As  an  acknowledgment  of  the  talent  she 
displayed,  Victor  Hugo  sent  the  young  socie- 
taire  the  following  note : 

"MADAM, — You  were  both  great  and 
charming.  I  am  an  old  combatant,  but  at 
the  moment  when  the  enchanted  people  were 
applauding  you  I  confess  that  I  wept.  The 
tear  drawn  forth  by  yourself  is  yours;  I  lay 
it  at  your  feet." 

"Hernani"  attracted  considerable  crowds. 
After  the  hundredth  performance,  in  con- 
formity with  custom,  the  poet  gave  a  dinner, 
and  about  200  guests,  including  the  theatrical 
critics,  many  men  of  letters,  and  all  the  ac- 
tors engaged  in  the  play,  met  together  at  the 
Grand  Hotel  to  share  the  pleasure  of  a  ban- 
quet, at  which  the  great  author  himself  pre- 
sided. His  deportment  on  the  occasion  could 
not  fail  to  make  a  deep  impression.  Noth- 
ing in  his  manner  betrayed  the  least  symp- 


THE  "GOLDEN  WEDDING"  OP   "HERNANI." 


260 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


this  occasion  it  was  listened  to  with  rapt 
attention  by  an  audience  that  included  the 
must  illustrious  men  of  the  day ;  but  no  soon- 
er did  the  curtain  fall  than  there  was  an  out- 
burst of  vehement  applause. 

In  a  few  minutes  the  curtain  rose  again, 
and  exposed  to  view  a  striking  bust  of  Vic- 
tor Hugo  elevated  on  a  pedestal  profusely 
decorated  with  wreaths  and  palm-leaves. 
Behind  it  were  grouped  all  the  actors  in  the 
play  and  all  the  societairea  of  the  theatre  at- 
tired in  the  costumes  of  the  poet's  leading 
characters,  while  the  back  of  the  stage  was 
thronged  with  ballet-dancers  waving  the  gay- 
est of  banners.  Sarah  Bernhardt,  in  her  char- 
acter of  Dona  Sol,  then  stepped  forward,  and, 
holding  a  palm-branch  in  her  hand,  recited 
in  her  peculiarly  harmonious  and  tender 
voice  some  appropriate  verses  composed  by 
Francois  Coppee.  In  her  own  enthusiasm 
she  carried  away  the  vast  audience,  and  the 
applause  thundered  out  louder  than  before. 

M.  Francisque  Sarcey,  one  of  the  best- 
known  dramatic  critics,  at  this  moment 
shouted, 

"Rise!" 

The  whole  house  rose  at  once  to  their  feet, 
and,  following  the  bidding  of  their  leader, 
made  the  air  ring  again  with  their  vocifera- 
tions. 

"  Ad  multos  annos!  long  live  Victor 
Hugo!" 

Overcome  by  his  emotion,  the  poet  had 
been  obliged  to  retire. 

And  may  we  not  hope  that  these  aspira- 
tions will  be  fulfilled?  It  is  Saint- Victor 
who  has  written  of  him : 

"His  old-age  (if  that  august  maturity 
which  is  ever  green  and  untarnished  can  be 
called  old-age)  never  asserts  itself  except  by 
some  outburst  of  rugged  strength.  Like  his 
own  Eviradnus, . 

"  'He  wearies  not ;  years  harden  him.' 
He  is  in  his  full  vigor  at  the  time  of  life 
•when  many  great  intellects  have  passed  into 
their  decline.  His  exceptional  mind  seems 
to  call  out  an  exceptional  physique.  Lon- 
gevity may  be  predicted  for  him.  At  the 
close  of  the  century  the  carmen  saeculare  may 
be  chanted  by  the  same  voice  as  hailed  its 
dawn." 

Within  a  few  days  after  the  performance 
at  the  Thefitre  Franpais,  the  Parisian  press, 
anxious  to  testify  its  regard  for  the  great 
dramatist  and  author,  gave  a  banquet  at  the 
H6tel  Continental.  All  the  elite  of  journalism 
were  present.  Victor  Hugo  himself  presided. 


After  dinner  M.  Emile  Augier,  an  author 
of  considerable  renown,  proposed  the  toast  of 
the  evening,  dwelling  much  on  the  marvellous 
vitality  of  the  noble  compositions  of  the  poet. 

"Time,  O  glorious  master,"  he  exclaimed, 
"takes  no  hold  upon  you;  you  know  noth- 
ing of  decline ;  you  pass  through  every  stage 
of  life  without  diminishing  your  virility. 
For  more  than  half  a  century  your  genius 
has  covered  the  world  with  the  unceasing 
flow  of  its  tide.  The  resistance  of  the  first 
period,  the  rebellion  of  the  second,  have 
melted  away  into  universal  admiration,  and 
the  last  refractory  spirits  have  yielded  to 
your  power.  .  .  . 

"When  La  Bruyere  before  the  Academie 
hailed  Bossuet  as  father  of  the  Church,  he 
was  speaking  the  language  of  posterity,  and  it 
is  posterity  itself,  thou  noble  master,  that  sur- 
rounds you  here,  and  hails  you  as  our  father." 

The  entire  assembly  rose,  and  the  room 
echoed  with  the  name  of  "Father."  It  was 
the  grateful  and  affectionate  homage  of  sons 
rendered  to  the  genius  that  overflowed  with 
the  love  of  humanity. 

M.  Delaunay  then  spoke  a  few  words  on 
behalf  of  M.  Emile  Perrin,  who  was  unable 
to  be  present,  and  expressed  a  hope  that  the 
assembly  would  co-operate  in  soliciting  from 
Victor  Hugo  another  new  dramatic  work. 

The  suggestion  was  greeted  with  prolonged 
cheering,  which  became  more  vehement  still 
when  Sarah  Bernhardt  came  forward  and 
embraced  the  poet  with  manifest  enthusiasm. 

After  a  short  speech  from  M.  Francisque 
Sarcey,  who  acknowledged  that  he  had  once 
been  one  of  the  refractory  spirits  alluded  to 
by  Emile  Augier,  Sarah  Bernhardt  again  re- 
cited Francois  Coppee's  verses,  and  the  audi- 
ence subsided  into  the  silence  of  expectation. 

Victor  Hugo  rose,  and  though  ever  and 
again  his  words  faltered  with  emotion,  he  read 
his  address  of  thanks  with  a  full  clear  voice : 

"  I  cannot,  nor  would  I,  say  more  than  a 
few  words. 

"Before  me  I  see  the  press  of  France. 
The  worthies  who  represent  it  here  have 
endeavored  to  prove  its  sovereign  concord, 
and  to  demonstrate  its  indestructible  unity. 
You  have  assembled  to  grasp  the  hand  of  an 
old  campaigner  who  began  life  with  the  cen- 
tury and  lives  with  it  still.  I  am  deeply 
touched.  I  tender  you  all  my  thanks. 

"All  the  noble  words  that  we  have  just 
been  hearing  only  add  to  my  emotion. 

"There  are  dates  that  seem  to  be  periodi- 
cally repeated  with  marked  significance. 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS  TIME. 


261 


The  26th  of  February,  1802,  was  my  birth- 
day; in  1830  it  was  the  time  of  the  first  ap- 
pearance of  '  Hernani ;'  and  this  again  is  the 
26th  of  February,  1880.  Fifty  years  ago,  I 
who  now  am  here  speaking  to  you  was  hat- 
ed, hooted,  slandered,  cursed.  To-day,  to- 
day .  .  .  but  the  date  is  enough. 

"Gentlemen,  the  French  press  is  one  of 
the  mistresses  of  the  human  intellect ;  it  has 
its  daily  task,  and  that  task  is  gigantic.  In 
every  minute  of  every  hour  it  has  its  influ- 
ence upon  every  portion  of  the  civilized 
world;  its  struggles,  its  disputes,  its  wrath, 
resolve  themselves  into  progress,  harmony, 
and  peace.  In  its  premeditations  it  aims  at 
truth;  from  its  polemics  it  flashes  forth  light. 


"I  propose  as  my  toast,  'The  prosperity 
of  the  French  press,  the  institution  that  fos- 
ters such  noble  designs  and  renders  such  no- 
ble services.' " 

The  shouts  of  "  Vive  Victor  Hugo!"  broke 
out  with  tremendous  peals  of  applause, 
which  only  died  away  as  the  company  ad- 
journed to  the  salon,  which  had  been  elabo- 
rately decorated  with  flowers  for  the  occasion. 

"That  evening,"  wrote  Aurelien  Scholl 
next  day,  "was  one  of  the  finest  spectacles 
imaginable. "  It  was  the  triumph  of  the  con- 
queror and  the  trophies  of  the  victory  were 
the  immortal  characters  of  Esmeralda,  Quasi- 
modo, Dona  Sol,  Didier,  Ruy  Bias,  and  Cesar 
de  Bazan. 


r**««_ 


DON  CESAB  DE  BASAN  ("RTJY  BLA8"). 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS  TIME. 


CHAPTER  XXXVIII. 

Victor  Hugo  as  a  Draughtsman.—  His  First  Effort— His  Subsequent  Progress.— His  Admiration  of  Albert 
Dflrer — Album  Published  by  Castel — Letter  of  Victor  Hugo  to  Castel.— New-year's  Gifts.— Caricatures. 
—Victor  Hugo's  Handwriting — M.  Jules  Claretie's  Observation.— Destination  of  Manuscripts. 


THE  sketches  that  have  been  introduced 
into  various  pages  of  this  work  will  have 
given  already  some  idea  of  Victor  Hugo's 
style  of  drawing,  but  more  special  notice  is  de- 
manded of  his  singular  power  as  a  draughts- 
man. 

In  an  article  published  in  L'Art  in  1875 
M.  Ph.  Burty  has  referred  to  the  first  draw- 
ing of  this  "  child  of  genius,"  the  rude  figure 
of  the  bird  within  the  egg-shell,  to  which  we 
have  alluded;  but  there  is  nothing  lo  show 
that  Victor  Hugo  in  his  youth  occupied  him- 
self much  with  drawing.  Of  course,  like 
other  boys  at  school,  he  was  taught  to  draw, 
but  manifestly  the  pen  had  more  charms  for 
him  than  the  pencil.  There  was  nothing 
at  that  time  to  indicate  the  power  that  he 
would  subsequently  develop.  He  say>  of 
himself: 

' '  The  first  time  that  I  took  a  sketch  from 
nature  was  after  I  had  reached  man's  estate. 
I  was  making  an  excursion  in  the  environs 
of  Paris,  travelling  with  a  lady  in  a  diligence. 
In  a  village  near  Meulan,  if  I  remember 
right,  the  vehicle  stayed  to  change  horses.  1 
alighted,  and  as  we  happened  to  be  near  the 
church  I  went  inside,  and  was  so  much 
struck  by  the  graceful  beauty  of  the  apse 
that  I  made  an  attempt  to  copy  some  of  the 
details.  My  hat  served  for  an  easel.  I  had 
only  about  ten  minutes  at  my  disposal,  but 
when  I  was  summoned  back  I  had  so  far 
finished  my  sketch  that  it  was  a  very  fair 
souvenir  of  the  place.  Then  for  the  first 
time  I  reali/ed  how  beneficially  copying  from 
nature  might  be  combined  with  my  literary 
pursuits.  The  lady  travelling  with  me  asked 
me  whether  I  intended  to  be  an  artist,  and 
we  laiighed  together  at  the  suggestion;  but 
the  incident  was  a  happy  circumstance  for 
me,  and  I  have  ever  since  delighted  in  sketch- 
ing architectural  peculiarities  of  fabrics  that 
remain  in  the  original  design  and  have  not 
been  'improved'  by  modern  handling. 
Architecture  is  often  a  witness  to  the  climate 
of  a  district :  a  gabled  roof  tells  of  the  preva- 


lence of  rain;  a  flat  roof,  of  sunshine;  and  a 
roof  weighted  heavily  with  stones,  of  wind." 

But  though  drawing  never  became  Victor 
Hugo's  occupation,  it  grew  more  and  more 
to  be  his  recreation.  By  perpetually  scrib- 
bling designs,  either  to  employ  his  leisure  mo- 
ments, to  fix  some  impression  on  his  memory, 
or  to  amuse  children,  the  desultory  draughts- 
man trained  himself  into  a  striking  artist. 
He  is  a  visionary  served  by  a  hand  that  is 
singularly  obedient,  and  that  reproduces  a 
conception  much  as  the  key -board  of  an  in- 
strument becomes  the  interpreter  of  the  mind 
of  a  musician.  M.  Meaulle,  who  has  en- 
graved the  illustrations  given  in  this  volume, 
not  inaptly  designates  his  style  as  the  "hedge- 
school  "  style,  implying  that  it  is  of  a  char- 
acter that  he  has  picked  up  promiscuously 
and  by  himself. 

He  has  never  had  recourse  to  any  patient 
and  systematic  teaching.  Often  as  a  mere 
relaxation  for  a  weary  mind  he  will  scratch 
down  a  few  random  lines;  soon  they  will 
bear  the  outline  of  a  cloud ;  below  the  cloud 
a  turret  will  appear,  then  a  castle  will  reveal 
itself,  and  the  scene  will  begin  to  be  trans- 
formed into  a  ruin  in  a  landscape  dark  as 
Walpurgis,  dimly  mingled  with  light  and 
shade.  For  these  vagaries  anything  will 
serve  for  a  starting-point,  and  a  chance  blot 
of  ink  will  soon  be  subject  to  the  most  start- 
ling metamorphoses,  art  coming  in  to  finish 
what  fancy  has  begun. 

"  My  inkstand,"  he  says, "  is  generally  my 
palette ;  if  I  want  a  lighter  shade,  a  glass  of 
water  is  my  only  requisite,  though  a  few 
drops  of  coffee  are  occasionally  very  useful. " 

So  skilful,  however,  is  his  hand  that,  in 
spite  of  the  simplicity  of  his  material,  he  has 
produced  much  upon  which  the  most  illus- 
trious artists  have  lavished  their  unqualified 
praise. 

Almost  all  his  drawings  are  commentaries 
upon  his  thoughts.  Unlike  Hoffmann,  who 
used  his  pencil  to  assist  his  fancy,  Victor 
Hugo  employs  it  to  develop  his  poems  and 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


263 


to  illustrate  his  own  literary  creations.  In  a 
word,  he  has  the  faculty  which  M.  Thiers  has 
described  as  "  common  alike  to  a  painter  and 
au  author,  the  artistic  imagination  that  may  be 
characterized  as  the  imagination  of  design." 
It  is  impossible  to  .make  any  direct  com- 
parison between  Victor  Hugo's  drawings  and 
those  of  any  other  artist,  though  we  know 
from  his  own  statement  which  of  the  old 
masters  he  admires  most,  since  he  has  apos- 
trophized Albert  Dilrer  as  his  model, 

"  O  Durer,  master  mine,  painter  old  and  pensive  !" 

Many  of  his  compositions  attest  his  ad- 
miration for  the  banks  of  the  Rhine,  with 
their  castles  and  ruins,  and  their  recollection 
seems  continually  to  hauut  him.  He  has  a 
loving  veneration  for  the  Middle  Ages,  which 
in  a  marvellous  manner  he  has,  as  it  were,  re- 
called to  life ;  he  takes  an  evident  delight  in 
the  dilapidated  fabrics,  the  crumbling  ceil- 
ings and  the  broken  mullions,  deprecating 
from  his  very  soul  all  modern  attempts  to 
restore  them. 

Theophile  Gautier  has  no  hesitation  in  as- 
sociating Victor  Hugo  with  the  masters  of 
the  romantic  school.  "  M.  Hugo, "  he  writes, 
"is  not  only  a  poet,  he  is  a  painter,  and  a 
painter  whom  Louis  Boulanger,  C.  Roque- 
plan,  or  Paul  Huet  would  not  refuse  to  own 
as  a  brother  in  art.  Whenever  he  travels  he 
makes  sketches  of  everything  that  strikes  his 
eye.  The  outline  of  a  hill,  a  break  in  the 
horizon,  an  old  belfry — any  of  these  will  suf- 
fice for  a  subject  of  a  rough  drawing,  which 
the  same  evening  will  see  worked  up  well- 
nigh  to  the  finish  of  an  engraving,  and  the 
object  of  unbounded  surprise  even  to  the 
most  accomplished  artists." 

Many  of  his  early  drawings  were  collected 
into  an  album  by  Castel,  the  publisher,  who 
received  from  him  the  following  letter  : 

"HADTEVILLE  HOUSE,  October,  1862. 

"Mr  DEAR  M.  CASTEL, — You  say  that  you 
have  obtained  possession  of  a  number  of  my 
old  scraps,  collected  from  the  margins  of  my 
manuscripts,  and  that  you  wish  to  publish 
them,  and,  moreover,  that  M.  Paul  Chenay 
offers  to  produce  fac-similes  of  them.  And 
now  you  ask  for  my  consent.  I  can  only 
say  that  I  am  very  much  afraid,  in  spite  of 
all  M.  Chenay's  talent,  that  these  scrawls, 
clumsily  put  on  paper  by  a  literary  man  pre- 
occupied by  his  work,  will  cease  to  have 
any  claim  to  be  considered  drawings  the 
very  moment  they  assert  their  pretensions. 


Nevertheless,  as  you  insist  upon  it,  I  suppose 
I  must  yield  to  your  request." 

And  after  explaining  that  the  proceeds  of 
the  sale  would  be  devoted  to  his  work  among 
poor  children,  he  adds : 

' '  I  should  never  have  imagined  that  these 
scraps  of  mine  would  have  attracted  the  at- 
tention of  such  a  connoisseur  as  yourself. 
But  do  as  you  please  with  them;  I  abandon 
them  to  their  fate;  and,  whatever  criticism 
may  decide  upon  them  elsewhere,  I  feel  sure 
that  my  poor  dear  little  children  will  think 
them  very  good." 

A  preface  was  written  for  the  album  by 
Theophile  Gautier,  and  it  sold  very  well. 
Another  and  more  valuable  album  has  been 
for  some  time  in  preparation,  the  text  of 
which  was  intended  to  be  from  the  hand  of 
the  lamented  Paul  de  Saint-Victor,  and  an 
edition  of  "  Les  Travailleurs  de  la  Mer,"  with 
illustrations  by  the  master  himself,  is  to  ap- 
pear before  long. 

Victor  Hugo  does  not  confine  himself  to 
drawing  old  buildings,  but  has  made  many 
landscapes.  M.  Auguste  Vacqtierie  possesses 
a  number  of  land  and  sea  pieces  bearing  the 
poet's  own  signature,  some  of  them  having 
been  given  him  as  presents;  others  he  has 
received  in  exchange  for  media?val  caskets, 
which  Victor  Hugo  delights  in  collecting ;  and 
a  few  of  them  he  has  won  in  games  at 
draughts.  From  the  sale  in  the  Rue  de  La 
Tour  d'Auvergne  he  procured  a  very  re- 
markable sepia  drawing.  It  was  executed 
between  1848  and  1851,  and  represents  Paris 
by  moonlight. 

Many  more  of  his  productions  still  remain 
at  Hauteville  House.  Moreover,  it  has  been 
his  habit  for  some  years  past  to  send  a  water- 
color  drawing  on  New  -  year's  -  day  to  some 
of  his  more  intimate  friends.  That  which 
was  received  by  Saint- Victor  in  1868  repre- 
sented a  burnt-down  village,  devastated  by 
bombs,  stained  with  blood  —  a  conspicuous 
object  in  it  being  a  child's  empty  cradle;  it 
has  the  inscription  written  below  "  Organi- 
sation Militaire. " 

M.  Burty  likewise  has  a  drawing  entitled 
"L'feclair,"  which  he  received  from  the  ex- 
ile with  a  characteristic  message: 

"  My  drawings,  or  what  are  called  so,  are 
somewhat  wild.  If  this  one  is  too  difficult 
for  you  to  engrave,  select  another.  In  my 
undisciplined  way,  I  use  the  feather  of  my 
pen  as  much  as  its  point." 

Madame  Lockroy  and  Madame  Drouet  also 


264 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  1I1S   TIME. 


are  in  possession  of  keepsakes  of  this  kind. 
and  in  Paul  Meurice's  study  is  a  large  sepia 
drawing  representing  a  strong  fortified  city. 
This  was  done  during  the  siege. 

Many  a  time  has  Victor  Hugo  been  a  mod- 
el to  his  artist  friends.  Painters  and  sculp- 
tors have  vied  with  each  other  in  reproducing 
his  noble  and  powerful  head,  and  it  is  inter- 
esting to  trace  from  their  labors  the  gradual 
change  that  has  marked  the  character  of  his 
striking  features. 

M.  Aglatls  Bouvenne  has  edited  a  curious 
catalogue  of  the  portraits  and  caricatures  of 
Victor  Hugo  from  1827  to  1879.  The  cari- 
catures are  about  a  hundred  in  number, 
and,  undoubtedly,  some  of  them  are  very 
humorous.  Those  by  Daumier  are  irrever- 
ent enough;  but  the  general  run  of  them, 
particularly  the  later  ones,  imply  as  much  of 
veneration  as  of  satire.  The  caricaturists, 
indeed,  may  be  said  to  have  paused  before 
the  conviction  of  his  greatness ;  Victor  Hugo, 
for  his  part,  was  always  ready  to  concede  to 
them  every  reasonable  license. 

Akin  to  the  subject  of  his  drawing,  al- 
though of  somewhat  inferior  interest,  is  that 
of  the  poet's  handwriting,  to  which  a  brief 
space  may  be  here  devoted. 


VICTOR  HUGO'S  HAND. 
(From  a  Photograph  by  Auguste  Vacquerie.) 

This  writing  has  undergone  a  considerable 
change.  In  his  younger  days  it  was  very 
small  and  close,  but  by  degrees  it  has  become 
decidedly  larger,  as  we  ourselves  have  had 
the  opportunity  of  judging  from  the  perusal 
of  many  of  his  manuscripts,  of  which  it  is 


said  M.  Jules  Claretie  intends  publishing  a 
description. 

In  reply  to  Michelet,  who  suggested  that 
books  might  be  printed  just  as  they  were 
written,  with  all  the  erasures  exhibited,  so 
that  the  various  phases  of  the  author's  mind 
might  be  seen  in  the  handwriting,  M.  Claretie 
says: 

"Victor  Hugo's  manuscripts  might  serve 
as  a  model  of  the  '  autographe  i>ii//r//n<''  of 
which  Michelet  dreamed.  They  exhibit  the 
poet  as  he  really  was,  writing  down  his  in- 
spirations upon  any  scrap  of  paper  that  came 
to  hand,  thus  immortalizing  the  green  pla- 
card on  which  he  jotted  down  the  poem  in 
'  Les  Feuilles  d'Automne '  which  begins, 

"  O  men  lettres  d'nmonr,  de  vertu,  de  jennesse !' 

a  poem  which  will  endure  for  centuries  to 
come. 

"  Under  the  hands  of  the  great  poet,  what 
was  mere  waste  paper,  designed  to  be  thrown 
away,  has  become  worthy  of  perpetual  pres- 
ervation. 

"  As  a  great  favor,  I  have  been  allowed  to 
peruse  these  precious  documents,  and  I  find 
that  they  contain  many  readings  that  are  as 
curious  as  they  are  interesting.  Paul  Meu- 
rice  has  specified  many  of  these.  Victor 
Hugo  may  be  said  to  be  here  seen  en  desha- 
bille, but  his  genius  loses  nothing  thereby. 
To  judge  from  the  manuscript  of  '  Les  Orien- 
tales,'  it  is  evident  that  the  lines  were  com- 
posed while  he  was  out  walking,  and  writ- 
ten down  immediately  on  his  return.  Noth- 
ing is  easier  for  me  than  to  imagine  how  he 
would  come  in  from  his  walk,  and,  ascertain- 
ing that  dinner  was  not  on  the  table,  would 
make  use  of  the  minutes  while  the  cook 
was  dishing  up  the  soup,  to  write  down 
upon  some  loose  scrap  of  paper  that  was 
ready  at  hand  verses  wonderful  as  '  La  Cap- 
tive '  and  '  Lazzara.'  He  writes  on  anything 
and  everything. " 

Since  1840  he  has  been  in  the  habit  of 
using  small  folio  paper,  which  he  has  pur- 
chased for  himself  in  the  ordinary  way;  and 
which  is  not,  as  has  been  reported,  the  gift 
of  a  generous  and  admiring  stationer.  He 
still  continues  to  write  with  quill  pens,  and 
his  handwriting  remains  firm  and  well  form- 
ed. Very  few  erasures  are  found  in  his 
work.  By  his  will  he  has  bequeathed  all  his 
manuscripts  to  the  Bibliotheque  Nationale, 
where  they  will  be  preserved,  and  will  form 
a  treasure  of  priceless  value. 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS  TIME. 


265 


CHAPTER  XXXIX. 

Retirement  from  Senatorial  Life.— Re-elected  in  1876.— Recent  Political  Sentiments.— Speech  at  Chateau 
d'Ean.— Conversation  at  Home.— Anticipations  for  the  Future. 


ALTHOUGH  Victor  Hugo  was  repeatedly 
solicited  to  stand  for  election  to  the  As- 
sembly, we  have  already  recorded  how  he 
remained  aloof  from  political  life.  In  1873, 
the  Lyons  electors  urged  him  to  come  for- 
ward, but  he  declined,  because  he  was  un- 
willing to  do  anything  to  compromise  the 
cause  of  the  amnesty,  and  considered  that 
he  could  best  serve  the  Republic  by  merg- 
ing his  own  individuality.  When  he  was 
selected  as  a  delegate  of  the  Paris  muni- 
cipal council  for  the  senatorial  elections, 
he  issued  an  address  to  the  French  com- 
munes, calling  upon  them  to  consolidate  a 
government  which  should  make  all  men 
brethren. 

On  the  5th  of  February,  1876,  he  was 
elected  senator  for  the  Seine  at  the  second 
ballot,  being  fourth  out  of  five  candidates. 
He  took  his  seat  with  the  extreme  Left,  and 
at  the  first  sitting  brought  forward  a  motion 
for  a  full  amnesty  for  the  condemned  Com- 
munists. The  motion  was  rejected ;  the  time 
for  pardon  had  not  yet  arrived. 

As  a  senator  he  took  part  most  conscien- 
tiously in  every  serious  debate,  giving  his 
vote  upon  every  question  that  was  at  all  im- 
portant. His  recent  political  opinions  are 
the  result  of  patient  observation  and  long 
experience. 

In  order  to  give  a  just  view  of  his  present 
sentiments  in  political  matters,  we  may  be 
permitted  first  to  give  a  resume  of  a  speech 
which  he  delivered  not  long  since  at  Cha- 
teau d'Eau  on  behalf  of  the  Workmen's 
Congress  at  Marseilles;  and  to  follow  this  by 
an  account  of  his  view  of  the  political  situa- 
tion, as  he  has  himself  expressed  it  in  the 
course  of  private  conversation. 

"For  four  hundred  years,"  he  said,  "the 
human  race  has  not  made  a  step  but  what 
-has  left  its  plain  vestige  behind.  We  enter 
now  upon  great  centuries.  The  sixteenth 
century  will  be  known  as  the  age  of  paint- 
ers, the  seventeenth  will  be  termed  the  age 
of  writers,  the  eighteenth  the  age  of  philos- 


ophers, the  nineteenth  the  age  of  apostles  and 
prophets.  To  satisfy  the  nineteenth  century, 
it  is  necessary  to  be  the  painter  of  the  six- 
teenth, the  writer  of  the  seventeenth,  the 
philosopher  of  the  eighteenth;  and  it  is  also 
necessary,  like  Louis  Blanc,  to  have  the  in- 
nate and  holy  love  of  humanity  which  con- 
stitutes an  apostolate,  and  opens  up  a  pro- 
phetic vista  into  the  future.  In  the  twen- 
tieth century  war  will  be  dead,  the  scaffold 
will  be  dead,  animosity  will  be  dead,  royalty 
will  be  dead,  and  dogmas  will  be  dead;  but 
Man  will  live.  For  all  there  will  be  but 
one  country — that  country  the  whole  earth ; 
for  all  there  will  be  but  one  hope — that  hope 
the  whole  heaven. 

"All  hail,  then,  to  that  noble  twentieth 
century  which  shall  own  our  children,  and 
which  our  children  shall  inherit ! 

' '  The  great  question  of  the  day  is  the 
question  of  labor.  The  political  question  is 
solved.  The  Republic  is  made,  and  nothing 
can  unmake  it.  The  social  question  remains ; 
terrible  as  it  is,  it  is  quite  simple;  it  is  a 
question  between  those  who  have,  and  those 
who  have  not.  The  latter  of  these  two 
classes  must  disappear,  and  for  this  there  is 
work  enough.  Think  a  moment!  man  is 
beginning  to  be  master  of  the  earth.  If  you 
want  to  cut  through  an  isthmus,  you  have 
Lesseps;  if  you  want  to  create  a  sea,  you 
have  Roudaire.  Look  you;  there  is  a  peo- 
ple and  there  is  a  world ;  and  yet  the  people 
have  no  inheritance,  and  the  world  is  a  des- 
ert. Give  them  to  each  other,  and  you  make 
them  happy  at  once.  Astonish  the  universe 
by  heroic  deeds  that  are  better  than  wars. 
Does  the  world  want  conquering?  No,  it  is 
yours  already;  it  is  the  property  of  civiliza- 
tion; it  is  already  waiting  for  you;  no  one 
disputes  your  title ! 

"Go  on,  then,  and  colonize.  If  you  re- 
quire a  sea,  make  it;  and  the  sea  will  beget 
navigation,  and  navigation  will  bring  cities 
into  being.  Only  find  the  man  that  really 
wants  a  plot  of  land,  and  then  say  to  him, 


266 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS  TIME. 


'Take  it;  the  land  is  yours;  take  it,  and  cul- 
tivate it.' 

"These  plains  around  you  are  magnifi- 
cent; they  are  worthy  to  be  French,  because 
they  have  been  Roman.  They  have  relapsed 
into  barbarism,  and  next  into  savagery.  Do 
away  with  them.  Restore  Africa  to  Europe ; 
and,  by  the  same  stroke,  restore  to  one  com- 
mon life  the  four  mother-nations — Greece, 
Italy,  Spain,  and  France.  Make  the  Mediter- 
ranean once  more  the  centre  of  history.  Add 
England  to  the  fourfold  fraternity  of  nations; 
associate  Shakespeare  with  Homer. 

"Meanwhile.be  prepared  for  resistance. 
Deeds  mighty  as  these  must  provoke  opposi- 
tion. Isthmuses  severed,  seas  transported, 
Africa  made  habitable,  these  are  undertak- 
ings that  can  only  be  commenced  in  the  face 
of  sarcasm  and  ridicule.  All  this  must  be 
expected.  It  is  a  novel  experiment;  and 
sometimes  those  who  make  the  worst  mis- 
takes are  those  who  ought  to  be  the  least 
mistaken.  Forty -five  years  ago,  M.  Thiers 
declared  that  the  railway  would  be  a  mere 
toy  between  Paris  and  Saint -Germain;  an- 
other distinguished  man,  M.  Pouillet,  confi- 
dently predicted  that  the  apparatus  of  the 
electric  telegraph  would  be  consigned  to  a 
cabinet  of  curiosities.  And  yet  these  two 
playthings  have  changed  the  course  of  the 
world. 

"Have  faith,  then;  and  let  us  realize  our 
equality  as  citizens,  our  fraternity  as  men, 
our  liberty  in  intellectual  power.  Let  us 
love  not  only  those  who  love  us,  but  those 
who  love  us  not.  Let  us  learn  to  wish  to 
benefit  all  men.  Then  everything  will  be 
changed;  truth  will  reveal  itself;  the  beauti- 
ful will  arise;  the  supreme  law  will  be  ful- 
filled, and  the  world  shall  enter  upon  a  per- 
petual fete  day.  I  say,  therefore,  have  faith! 

"Look  down  at  your  feet,  and  you  see 
the  insect  moving  in  the  grass;  look  up- 
wards, and  you  will  see  the  star  resplendent 
in  the  firmament;  yet  what  are  they  doing? 
They  are  both  at  their  work :  the  insect  is  do- 
ing its  work  upon  the  ground,  and  the  star 
is  doing  its  work  in  the  sky.  It  is  an  infinite 
distance  that  separates  them,  and  yet  while 
it  separates  unites.  They  follow  their  law. 
And  why  should  not  their  law  be  ours  ? 
Man,  too,  has  to  submit  to  universal  force, 
and  inasmuch  as  he  submits  in  body  and  in 
soul,  he  submits  doubly.  His  hand  grasps 
the  earth,  but  his  soul  embraces  heaven; 
like  the  insect,  he  is  a  thing  of  dust,  but  like 
the  star  he  partakes  of  the  empyrean.  He 


labors  and  he  thinks.  Labor  is  life,  and 
thought  is  light!" 

Such  sentiments  as  these,  it  may  well  be 
imagined,  were  received,  when  they  were  de- 
livered, with  unbounded  admiration,  and  are 
quoted  to  illustrate  the  poet's  glowing  aspi- 
rations for  the  future. 

And  in  his  own  house  Victor  Hugo  has 
just  the  same  fascinating  way  of  setting 
forth  the  opinions  that  he  entertains.  The 
present  writer,  having  one  day  asked  him 
what  he  thought  of  the  existing  condition  of 
things  in  France,  had  the  pleasure  of  hearing 
him  confirm  the  views  of  the  foregoing 
speech,  and  dwell  upon  the  prospect  which 
he  believes  is  before  his  country. 

Of  course,  it  is  impossible  to  reproduce 
the  charm  of  the  poet's  language,  but  the 
tenor  of  his  thoughts  may  be  faithfully  rep- 
resented in  the  f ollowing  summary : 

According  to  his  view,  the  Republic  as  it 
now  exists  is  an  acceptable  Republic,  and 
M.  Jules  Grevy,  its  president,  is  animated  by 
intentions  that  are  upright  and  praiseworthy. 
Although  there  is  no  close  intimacy  between 
the  two  men,  they  regard  one  another  with 
respect  and  sympathy. 

The  poet  holds  that  we  are  now  in  posses- 
sion of  a  bourgeoise  Republic,  which  is  not  an 
ideal  one,  but  which  will  undergo  a  slow 
but  gradual  transformation.  Its  present 
stage  is  indispensable,  because  for  a  form  of 
government  that  shall  be  capable  of  being 
brought  to  perfection  it  is  essential  to  at- 
tach to  it  all  who  have  hitherto  had  any 
share  in  directing  public  affairs;  and  the 
actual  head  of  the  State  is  a  man  of  such 
rectitude  of  judgment  and  honesty  of  pur- 
pose that  he  may  well  inspire  the  completest 
confidence. 

To  this  assertion  Victor  Hugo  added  tin- 
remark  that  he  did  not  consider  it  the  place 
of  men  of  his  time  of  life  to  take  the  lead  in 
public  matters.  He  regards  himself  and  his 
contemporaries  as  having  been  pioneers  and 
monitors,  whose  advice  is  worth  obtaining, 
because  they  have  gained  their  knowledge 
by  experience,  having  lived  through  the 
struggles  of  the  past ;  but  whose  theories 
cannot  be  put  into  practice  by  themselves. 
They  are  old,  and  the  reins  of  government 
should  be  placed  in  the  hands  of  men  of  a 
younger  generation.  They  belong  to  the 
nineteenth  century;  the  future  solution  of 
the  social  question  belongs  to  the  twentieth. 

That  solution,  he  declares,  will  be  found  in 
nothing  less  than  the  universal  spread  of 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


267 


instruction;  it  will  follow  the  formation  of 
new  schools  where  salutary  knowledge  shall 
be  imparted.  Hitherto  the  teaching  has  been 
positively  bad,  as  is  demonstrated  by  the  fact 
that  a  father,  upon  mature  reflection,  always 
has  to  say  to  his  son,  ' '  Forget  what  I  have 
made  you  learn."  The  great  aim  in  instruc- 
tion should  be  unity  and  truth.  For  this, 
in  due  time,  the  suitable  lesson-books  will  be 
forthcoming.  These  will  replace  the  manu- 
als of  the  present  century,  although  the  pres- 
ent century  is  already  in  advance,  having 
taken  a  stride,  and  made  a  beginning  in  il- 
luminating humanity.  By  educating  the 
child,  you  endow  the  man,  and  thencefor- 
ward, after  that  is  brought  about,  you  may 
proceed  to  exercise  severe  repression  upon 
any  one  who  resists  what  is  right,  because 
you  have  already  trained  him  so  that  he  can- 
not plead  ignorance  in  his  own  behalf. 

And  are  we  to  expect  a  Utopia,  he  asks, 
as  soon  as  this  endowment  of  knowledge  is 
conferred?  Certainly  not.  When  we  think 
of  the  progress  of  science  and  of  the  im- 
mense forces  of  nature,  of  those  mighty  cur- 
rents that  have  hitherto  remained  unutilized 
in  the  vast  tide,  now  despised,  but  hereafter 
to  be  brought  into  service,  we  become  con- 
vinced that  human  efforts  have  been  expend- 
ed to  no  purpose.  A  great  step  has  been 
already  made;  and  when  the  time  shall  arrive 
that  it  is  no  longer  requisite  for  man  thus  to 
throw  away  his  time  and  strength,  what  will 
then  be  wanted  to  make  him  happy  as  man 
may  be?  He  will  require  land  to  cultivate. 


Then,  too,  it  will  be  possible  to  say,  "You 
require  land  ;  take  the  land!  here  is  what 
will  be  for  your  advantage!"  Distance  no 
longer  will  be  an  obstacle;  prolific  conti- 
nents, such  as  the  whole  interior  of  Africa, 
are  destined  erelong  to  be  conquered  by 
civilization. 

Moreover,  in  the  course  of  the  coming  cen- 
tury, frontiers,  so  to  speak,  will  have  disap- 
peared, for  the  idea  of  fraternity  is  making 
its  way  throughout  the  world.  Here  the 
land  is  the  monopoly  of  the  few;  far  away 
it  is  owned  by  none.  He  who  possesses 
none  in  the  land  of  his  birth  must  not  hesi- 
tate to  depart  and  become  a  proprietor  in  a 
country  that  no  longer  seems  distant.  The 
whole  earth  belongs  to  all  men. 

None  are  so  unhappy  as  the  idle ;  none  so 
dissatisfied  as  those  who  persist  in  doing 
nothing  for  themselves ;  but  these,  thanks  to 
salutary  teaching,  will  gradually  become 
fewer  and  fewer.  A  goodly  future  is  dawn- 
ing. It  is  impossible  that  the  labors  of  cen- 
turies should  forever  remain  unproductive. 

In  this  way,  only  in  his  own  unrivalled 
manner,  he  pours  out  his  belief  in  the  fut- 
ure of  humanity  ;  and  if  there  be  those 
who  regard  Victor  Hugo's  creed  as  blind 
credulity,  and  are  disposed  to  treat  his 
aspirations  as  visionary  delusions,  we  can 
only  say  of  such  that  they  are  themselves 
the  losers.  It  is  a  bright  creed  and  an  en- 
couraging, and  is  based  upon  the  prospect 
of  emancipation,  uprightness,  and  coming 
happiness. 


268 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  Ills   TIME. 


CI1. \1TKK    XI, 

Present  Residence  of  the  Poet— Domestic  Habits.— Economy  of  Time.—  Fete  of  February  27, 1881.— Proces- 
sion of  Children.— Address  of  Corporations.— Speech  in  Keply.—  Illumination  of  Theatres.— The  Poet's 
Continued  Work. — Works  yet  to  Appear.— Conclusion. 


SINCE  1878  the  poet  has  resided  at  No.  130 
Avenue  d'Eylau,  at  one  end  of  Passy,  near 
the  Bois  de  Boulogne,  in  a  part  that  is  not 
yet  completely  built  over,  and  which  is  in 
such  a  transition  state  that  it  can  be  called 
neither  town  nor  country.  His  house  is  semi- 
detached, and  adjoins  that  which  is  occupied 
by  M.  and  .Mine.  Lockroy  and  Georges  and 
Jeanne.  There  is  a  communication  between 
the  two  residences,  so  that  he  may  literally 
be  said  to  be  under  the  same  roof  as  his 
belongings. 

Throughout  the  neighborhood  his  house  is 
familiarly  described  as  "the  house  with  the 
great  veranda;"  this  veranda  being  glazed, 
and  thus  affording  a  shelter  from  the  rain 
for  any  passers-by.  The  house  is  three 
stories  high,  and  the  study  is  on  the  first 
floor,  where  the  poet  lives  in  what  may  be 
said  to  be  almost  a  bower,  looking  out  on 
one  side  in  the  direction  of  the  avenue,  and 
on  the  other  towards  a  pleasant  garden,  with 
a  lawn  surrounded  by  flowers  and  shaded 
by  noble  trees.  From  a  small  fountain  a  lit- 
tle stream  trickles  down,  in  which  Jeanne's 
white  ducks  are  constantly  paddlintr  •  'vV>nt 
A  flight  of  steps  lenrU  * — 
and  «*  " 


and  ladies  are  always  found  at  his  table,  as, 
according  to  his  judgment,  a  dinner  from 
which  ladies  are  excluded  loses  all  its 
charm. 

As  a  host  he  is,  as  we  have  observed,  al- 
ways delightful;  his  reminiscences  extend 
from  the  beginning  of  the  century,  his  man- 
ners are  polished,  and  to  the  courtly  dignity 
of  a  French  peer  he  unites  the  affability  of  a 
kind  and  genial  companion.  His  advancing 
a  ire  seems  to  bring  him  no  depression;  he 
speaks  calmly  of  the  short  time  that  remains 
to  him,  and  talks  of  the  wide  projects  which 
his  brain  has  yet  to  conceive.  In  this  re- 
spect he  is  unlike  Lamartine;  he  makes  no 
attempt  to  ignore  his  age,  and  makes  no  apol- 
ogy for  wearing  spectacles. 

Victor  Hugo  has  never  given  up  his  habit 
of  early  rising;  he  nearly  always  quits  his 
bed  at  live  o'clock,  remaining  in  his  bedroom, 
which  has  become  his  favorite  place  of  study, 
as  being  more  quiet  and  retired  than  any 
other  apartment.  His  bed  is  perfectly  hori- 
zontal, and  he  uses  neither  bolster  nor  pillow. 
Among  these  minor  details,  we  may  mention 
that  he  has  never  accustomed  himself  to  the 

"~rried  an 

cautions 

-ere  cold, 

years  that 

n  eminent 

cold    bath 

very  morn- 

;r. 

his  habit  of 

n,  and  as  the 

mversation  is 

er  topics.    In 

3nt  of  the  even- 

nking  to  carry 

~»een  commenced 

-i  him, 

*  think  is  a  proper  def- 


JL  the  poet,  "  I  think  it  would 
to  speak  of  '  wrong '  now,  when 


VICTOR  HUGO'S  GARDEN  IN  THE  AVENUE  D'EYLAU. 


270 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  JUS   TLMK. 


we  ought  to  be  enjoying  the  society  of  the 
ladies. " 

His  cheerfulness  is  perpetual.  He  has  not, 
however,  the  same  strain  put  upon  his  social 
powers  as  he  had  in  the  Rue  de  Clichy.  His 


Altogether  he  has  much  to  which  he 
must  attend,  notwithstanding  that  he  has 
ceased  to  open  for  hiin.sclt  the  numerous 
letters  which  pour  in  day  after  day,  and  has 
learned  to  rely  upon  the  assistance  of  his 


VICTOR  HUGO  IN  HIS  STUDY. 
(A  Sketch  from  Nature  by  M.  Rtgamty.) 


residence  is  not  so  central,  and  he  has  no  vis- 
itors after  midnight;  consequently,  he  retires 
earlier.  In  1878  he  found  an  acceptable  res- 
pite from  all  receptions  in  a  few  weeks'  visit 
to  Guernsey. 


secretary,   Richard   Lesclide,  and  Madame 
Drouet.     In  this  way,  only  matters  of  real 
importance  are  brought  to  his  personal  no- 
tice. 
His  age,  with  relation  to  his  pursuits,  more 


272 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


than  justifies  the  remark  that  he  is  accus- 
tomed to  make  with  a  smile, 

"  I  have  no  longer  any  time  to  waste." 

Our  task  is  done.  By  the  aid  of  such  ma- 
terial as  has  come  within  our  reach,  we  have 
endeavored  to  present  a  faithful  portrait. 
But 

"A  poet  is  a  world  shut  up  within  a  man," 

and  Victor  Hugo  alone  could  portray  Victor 
Hugo.  He  advances  in  years  like  the  sturdy 
oak;  or  rather,  perhaps  we  might  say,  he  is 
like  one  of  those  stately  tropical  trees  which, 
though  bearing  the  weight  of  centuries,  sends 
forth  robust  branches  and  giant  foliage,  gath- 
ers creepers  round  its  bark,  spreads  its  shade 
and  diffuses  its  sweetness  far  around,  thus 
uniting  strength  with  grace,  and  compelling 
tin-  tribute  of  admiration. 

This  marvellous  existence  has  not  yet 
reached  its  limit. 

As  an  introduction  to  this  history  we  gave 
a  record  of  the  fete  at  Besa^on,  the  city  of 
the  poet's  birth,  and  it  appears  to  be  an  ap- 
propriate denouement  to  our  work  to  relate 
the  circumstances  of  the  fete  that  was  cele- 
brated in  his  honor  in  Paris  on  the  27th  of 
February,  1881. 

A  few  days  before  Victor  Hugo's  birthday, 
M.  Bazire  made  a  proposition  in  Le  Beau- 
marchais  that  the  people  of  Paris  should  be 
invited  to  celebrate  the  occasion  by  paying 
their  respects  to  him  at  his  house.  - 

M.  Jeannin,  the  editor  of  Le  Beaumarchaits, 
readily  entered  into  the  scheme,  and  very 
quickly,  through  his  exertions,  not  only  the 
capital,  but  the  nation  at  large,  began  to  de- 
vise what  form  the  tribute  of  homage  should 
assume.  A  committee  was  forthwith  form- 
ed, and  deputations  hastened  up  from  every 
quarter.  Representatives  came  from  Lon- 
don, Vienna,  Pesth,  and  Brussels;  and  flow- 
ers, scarce  as  they  were  at  that  season  of  the 
year,  were  contributed  with  boundless  pro- 
fusion. 

The  fete  was  fixed  for  the  following  Sun- 
day, the  27th. 

On  the  Saturday  evening  previous,  Victor 
Hugo's  salon  was  crowded  with  an  unusual 
number  of  his  friends,  and  M.  Jules  Ferry, 
the  President  of  the  Council,  accompanied  by 
his  secretary,  M.  Rambaud,  arrived  with  a 
magnificent  Sevres  vase,  which  he  presented 
to  the  poet,  making  a  brief  and  appropriate 
speech  in  the  name  of  the  government  of  the 
French  Republic. 


By  ten  o'clock  next  morning  a  long  line 
of  people  in  holiday  attire  began  to  make 
their  way  to  the  Avenue  d'Eylau,  which  was 
hung  with  flags.  Platforms  were  erected 
along  it,  and  Victor  Hugo's  house  was  dec- 
orated so  profusely  both  inside  and  out  with 
the  flowers  that  had  been  sent  for  the  pur- 
pose that  it  had  the  aspect  of  a  vast  bower. 
One  of  the  most  exquisite  of  the  wreaths  was 
contributed  by  the  Comedie  Fran9aise,  and 
was  surrounded  with  banners  emblazoned 
with  the  names  of  the  great  author's  dramas. 
A  procession  was  formed  of  little  girls  taste- 
fully attired,  and  bearing  a  banner  inscribed 
"L'Art  d'etre  Grand -pere,"  with  which  they 
entered  the  salon,  where  they  were  received 
with  the  greatest  delight  by  the  venerable 
man  and  his  two  grandchildren.  One  of  the 
girls  recited  some  verses  that  had  been  com- 
posed by  M.  Catulle  Mend£s,  upon  which 
Victor  Hugo  embraced  her  affectionately, 
saying,  "In  embracing  one  of  you,  I  embrace 
you  all."  After  this  they  all  retired  into  the 
street,  where  they  were  joined  by  an  im- 
mense number  of  the  children  of  various 
schools,  and  Victor  Hugo  showed  himself  at 
the  window  while  the  youthful  multitude 
made  the  air  ring  again  with  their  merry 
voices. 

Immediately  after  this,  the  hero  of  the  day 
received  an  address  which  was  delivered  by 
M.  Dommartin  in  the  name  of  the  Belgian 
press;  and  shortly  before  noon  the  munici- 
pal cortege  left  the  Place  de  l'Arc  de  Tri- 
omphe,  which  was  the  general  rendezvous 
for  the  many  corporations  that  were  to  file 
before  the  house.  Standing  at  his  window, 
he  made  them  a  brief  speech.  He  said  : 

"  It  is  not  in  my  own  name,  for  I  am  noth- 
ing, but  in  the  name  of  every  one  who  posses- 
ses life  or  reason,  or  love,  or  hope,  or  power  of 
thought,  that  I  give  my  greeting  this  day  to 
Paris.  It  is  Paris  that  I  hail  with  my  heart 
and  soul.  From  time  to  time  history  has  set 
upon  certain  cities  a  mark  that  is  unique. 
And  during  4000  years  there  have  been  three 
cities  that  may  claim  to  be  signalized  as  the 
headquarters  of  civilization.  There  have 
been  Athens  and  Rome,  and  now  there  is 
Paris.  What  Athens  was  to  Grecian  an- 
tiquity, and  what  Rome  was  to  Roman  antiq- 
uity, such  is  Paris  to  Europe,  to  America — 
nay,  to  the  whole  civilized  globe.  Who 
speaks  to  Paris  speaks  to  the  world;  he 
speaks  urbi  et  orbi. 

"And  what  am  I  but  a  humble  wayfarer 
among  you  all?  I  have  only  my  own  share 


THE  POET'S  HOUSE  ON  FEBRUARY  27,  188L 
18 


274 


VICTOR  1IUQO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


in  your  lot ;  and  as  one  of  yourselves,  in  the 
name  of  all  the  cities  of  Europe  and  America, 
from  Athens  to  New  York,  from  London  to 
Moscow,  I  salute  and  extol,  as  I  love,  the 
sacred  city  of  Paris!" 

While  this  address  was  being  delivered  the 
whole  of  the  procession  kept  in  motion. 


of  their  land.  It  would  take  long  to  enumer- 
ate the  elements  of  that  marvellous  crowd 
assembled  to  pay  their  tribute  of  respect  to 
the  bard  of  humanity ;  there  were  repre- 
sentatives of  every  class — students  from  the 
halls  of  arts  and  sciences,  and  deputations 
from  all  the  great  Lycees,  many  of  them  car- 


THK  CHTT/DREN'S  GREETING. 


Hail  was  falling,  and  it  was  bitterly  cold. 
Yet  no  one  seemed  to  regard  the  weather. 
The  poet  stood  bareheaded  at  the  window, 
his  grandchildren  beside  him,  and  the  whole 
concourse  denied  past  the  house.  There 
•were  not  less  than  half  a  million  people 
who  thus  thronged  to  pay  their  homage  to 
the  poet  whom  they  honored  as  the  glory 


rying  wreaths  of  flowers  as  they  marched 
along. 

One  great  stream  flowed  towards  the  Tro- 
cadero,  where  a  performance  had  been  ar- 
ranged of  portions  of  the  poet's  plays,  the 
proceeds  of  which  were  devoted  to  the  poor. 
For  this  the  leading  artistes  of  the  day  had 
volunteered  their  services.  M.  Louis  Blanc 


VICTOR  HUGO  AND  HIS   TIME. 


275 


made  a  speech,  recounting  the  incomparable 
services  which  the  noble  poet  had  rendered 
to  their  national  literature.  M.  Coquelin 
also  recited  some  laudatory  verses  that  had 
been  specially  composed  by  Theodore  de 
Banville. 

All  through  the  hours  of  the  performance 
the  crowd  kept  passing  along  before  the 
poet's  window,  and  it  was  not  until  it  was 
quite  dusk  that  he  could  retire  to  his  salon, 
which  by  that  time  was  full  of  friends  who 
had  come  to  congratulate  him  on  his  proud 
enjoyment.  In  the  course  of  the  evening  he 
said  to  some  ladies, 

"I  feel  as  if  I  were  only  twenty  to-day." 

Messages  from  every  quarter  throughout 
the  length  and  breadth  of  France  were  pour- 
ing in  all  day,  and  many  provincial  towns 
had  their  own  fete  in  recognition  of  the  na- 
tional rejoicing. 

All  the  theatres  were  illuminated  in  the 
evening,  and  many  verses  were  recited  to 
celebrate  the  poet's  honor. 

Such  are  some  of  the  principal  details  of 
the  festival  which  was  observed  to  testify 
the  universal  admiration  of  one  whom  Emile 
Augier  has  worthily  called  "  the  father  of 
literature."  His  name  has  been  adopted  in 
the  street  nomenclature  of  various  towns, 
and  the  Place  d'Eylau  is  now  the  Place  Vic- 
tor Hugo,  and  has  since  been  marked  by  the 
erection  of  his  statue. 

And  Victor  Hugo's  labors  are  not  ended 
yet.  No  ovation  so  satisfies  him  as  to  in- 
duce him  to  lay  aside  his  work.  His  youth 
asserts  itself  as  perpetual,  his  strength  of  in- 
tellect still  demonstrates  itself  to  be  prodig- 
ious. Since  the  fete  of  1881  the  appearance 
of  "  Les  Quatre  Vents  de  1'Esprit "  has  again 


borne  witness  to  his  magic  power,  and  other 
surprises  are  still  in  reserve:  already  com- 
pleted, though  not  yet  published,  are  ' '  Toute 
la  Lyre,"  two  volumes  of  poetry;  "La  Vi- 
sion du  Dante,"  "La  Fin  de  Satan;"  and  the 
third  part  of  "La  Legende  des  Siecles." 
Besides  these,  there  are  "  Torquemada,"  a 
poetical  drama  in  five  acts;  "L'Epee,"  also 
in  verse;  and  two  comedies,  "La  Grand'- 
mere"  and  "La  Foret  Mouillee."  Not  that 
the  list  of  his  unpublished  works  is  thus 
complete,  for,  at  his  own  request,  we  have 
inspected  his  long  accumulating  hoard  of 
manuscripts,  and  have  found  many  which 
hereafter  will  see  the  light. 

And  what  more  is  to  be  added?  We  must 
append  the  praise  that  all  his  writings  have 
been  devoted  to  the  cause  of  humanity. 
The  multitude  and  variety  of  his  works  yield 
their  testimony  to  his  unparalleled  industry; 
but  it  is  the  glory  of  them  all  that  they 
are  faithful  witnesses  to  his  belief  in  right, 
his  horror  of  meanness,  his  contempt  of 
injustice,  his  truth,  his  integrity,  and  his 
courage. 

As  his  mind  became  emancipated  from  its 
early  trammels,  his  genius  soared  aloft  like 
an  eagle  in  its  flight.  Fate  has  allotted  him 
his  share  of  suffering;  but  every  storm  that 
has  passed  over  him  has  only  left  him  more 
calm  and  gentle.  The  course  of  time  seems 
reluctant  to  touch  his  venerable  head,  and 
there  are  those  who  venture  to  indulge  the 
hope  that  he  may  survive  to  preside  over  the 
centenary  of  the  Revolution  of  1789. 

His  old-age  is  full  of  honor.  He  has  lived 
long  enough  to  witness  his  own  apotheosis; 
already  he  enjoys  the  glory  of  immortality, 
even  though  he  has  not  ended  his  mortal  days. 


THE   END. 


BY  VICTOR  HUGO. 


Ninety-Three, 


Ninety-Three.  A  Novel.  By  VICTOR  HUGO,  Author  of  "  Toilers  of  the  Sea," 
"  Les  Miserables,"  &c.  Translated  by  FRANK  LEE  BENEDICT.  8vo,  Paper,  25 
cents;  12mo,  Cloth,  $1  75. 


The  types  in  "Ninety-Three"  are  many  and 
grand.  They  remind  us  of  Jean  Valjean,  of  En- 
jolras,  of  that  legion  of  august  and  legendary 
characters  which  he  has  created.  Gauvain  is 
the  staunch,  ardent  Republican  of  the  Danton 
cast,  seeking  in  clemency  and  union,  rather  than 
in  repression  and  inflexibility,  the  means  of  mar- 
shalling Republican  France  under  one  banner. 
Lantenac  is  a  magnificent  embodiment  of  the 
List  Bretons.  Cimourdain  is  the  true  incarna- 
tion in  Revolution  of  what  Lantenac  is  in  Roy- 
alism.  Sergeant  Radoub  gives  a  capital  idea  of 
the  dare-devil  Parisians  of  the  Revolutionary  time 
— rough,  good-natured,  and  brave  to  foolliardi- 
ness  —  who  made  head  against  the  coalescent 
armies  of  Europe. — Athenaeum,  London. 

Beautiful  sayings,  true  and  noble  thoughts, 
inexpressibly  tender  sentiments,  are  just  as  abun- 


dant. We  need  not  refer  to  them  ;  they  will  be 
discovered  and  made  much  of,  as  they  deserve 
to  be.  This  work  is  written  with  no  abatement 
of  the  vigor  of  his  manhood  :  it  is  full  of  inven- 
tion, artisiic  cunning,  and  a  wafting  wind  that 
is  not  to  be  resisted.  Hugo  has  but  to  lay  his 
finger  on  children  to  make  them  adorable,  and 
such  a  voyage  autour  de  la  chambre  as  the  three 
little  ones  perform  in  the  library  of  the  tower  of 
the  Tourgue,  when  the  storming  of  the  chateau 
is  in  preparation  and  the  shadow  of  a  terrible 
destiny  hangs  over  them,  could  only  have  been 
imagined  by  this  poet  of  children  and  powerful 
disposer  of  extreme  and  vivid  contrasts. — Pall 
Mall  Budget,  London. 

Its  purpose  is  high,  and  is  served  by  novel 
researches  into  the  history  of  the  Revolution. — 
Academy,  London. 


The  Toilers  of  the  Sea, 

The  Toilers  of  the  Sea.  A  Novel.  By  VICTOR  HUGO,  Author  of  "  Les  Mi- 
serables." 8vo,  Paper,  50  cents ;  or,  with  Two  Illustrations  by  GUSTAVE  DORE, 
8vo,  Cloth,  $1  50. 


In  laying  down  the  "Toilers  of  the  Sea,"  after 
reaching  its  last  page,  we  feel  as  though  we  were 
rising  from  an  involuntary  detention  in  a  dream- 
land to  which  the  author  could  alone  admit  us. 
Standing,  as  it  does,  above  its  predecessors  in 


reality,  and  therefore  in  interest,  no  power  of 
prophecy  is  needed'  to  assert  that  the  "Toilers 
of  the  Sea"  will  be  more  widely  read  and  more 
highly  thought  of  than  even  "Les  Miserables" 
or  "  Notre  Dame  de  Paris." — London  Review. 


Victor  Hugo's  History  of  a  Crime, 

The  History  of  a  Crime:  the  Testimony  of  an  Eye-Witness.  By  VICTOR 
HUGO.  Illustrated.  8vo,  Paper.  Parts  I.  and  II.,  each  25  cents  ;  Complete 
in  one  Number,  4to,  Paper,  10  cents. 


A  magnificent  piece  of  writing. — Examiner, 
London. 

Tells  the  story  of  the  coup  d'etat  with  wonder- 
ful power.  It  is  Hugo  at  his  best. — Indepen- 
dent, N.  Y. 

In  this  work  Victor  Hugo  has  outdone  him- 
self, and  he  has  given  the  world  what  it  seems 
only  reasonable  to  call  the  greatest  of  even  bis 


writings.  *  *  *  Although  the  world  is  tolerably 
familiar  with  the  crime  of  which  he  here  tells  the 
story,  it  renus  here  in  Hugo's  compact,  eloquent, 
vivid  pages  like  a  revelation  of  something.  *  *  * 
The  book,  with  its  fulness  of  detail  and  wonder- 
ful eloquence,  is  a  most  important  contribution 
to  modern  history.  *  *  *  No  novel  can  compare 
with  it. — Atlantic  Monthly,  Boston. 


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_    from  which  it  was  bormln^ 

I 


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